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Beforehand note: When Kurosawa died, many obituaries called him the God of Cinema, and it was hardly an exaggeration. Fans of Peckinpah, Lucas, Spielberg, Millius, Cameron and almost any respected modern-day director would see many familiar scenes and motives in his films, made almost a half century ago. The influence Kurosawa had on future filmmakers is immeasurable, yet his films still look fresh, original and very modern.

Rating: ★★★★★ (Classic)

悪い奴ほどよく眠るI’m fond of SO MANY of Akira Kurokawa’s films, my favorite is The Bad Sleep Well followed by The Seven Samurai and then Ikiru. It’s much easier to define favorite than it is best.

THE BAD SLEEP WELL often dubbed as a contemporary version of Hamlet with a touch of sardonic humor and noirish vision. With great Toshiro Mifune performances, as an apparently mildmannered “salaryman” plotting revenge against his bosses.

I loved it a lot, not only it is very classically noir, it is vicious noir! This film is filled with images that are oddly surreal. The wedding party presented as a stage show for the keystone cop press, crippled girl stumbling to the wedding march….

One of my favorite scenes in film history: the funeral shot from the POV of a parked car with the soundtrack coming from a tape made in a bar of the executives talking about the dead man (and Wada weeps at his own funeral). That’s about as savage an expose of corporate moral corruption as I have ever seen in a movie…

The film starts out great and is strong throughout, it manages to go from social commentary to personal tragedy and it’s solid and powerful. It’s often funny, and there are many times when you’re cheering Mifune’s character as you watch him get the better of the crooks. And when he realizes that he really loves the woman he married as part of his plan to attack her father.

But the end, where everything falls apart, Mifune is killed AND dishonored, and the crooks get away with it all…well, that’s horribly depressing. The fact that you thought (or at least, I thought) that it was heading for a happy ending made it all the worse. I feel demoralized, helpless and hopeless.

Brilliant film.