The Bad Sleep Well

The Bad Sleep Well centres on Kôichi Nishi, who marries the daughter of Iwabuchi, vice president of a large corporation, and takes a senior position inside the firm. At the wedding reception, the cake is shaped like the company's headquarters, and one detail of it stirs up memories of the death of Nishi's father, an official who was said to have killed himself years earlier. Nishi is not there simply to build a career or a marriage: he has come to find out who was responsible for his father's death and to take revenge on those involved. As the police close in on bribery within the company and one employee is accused while another disappears, his plan begins to unfold.

Akira Kurosawa directed the film, his thirteenth in chronological order, following The Hidden Fortress and preceding Yojimbo, and he wrote the screenplay with Hideo Oguni and Eijirō Hisaita. He also produced it with Tomoyuki Tanaka for TOHO and Kurosawa Production. The broadly Hamlet-inspired story runs 150 minutes and is carried by Toshirō Mifune as Nishi, with Masayuki Mori as Iwabuchi, Kyōko Kagawa as Yoshiko Nishi, Kamatari Fujiwara, Takeshi Katō and Tatsuya Mihashi among the 37 credited cast members, in a crime drama with thriller elements.

Released in Japan in September 1960, the film holds a rating of 7.9 from around 15,000 votes on IMDb and 7.7 from roughly 295 votes on TMDB. The critics' rating stands at 7.8 from 19 reviews, placing it in line with how audiences have received it.