The Bad Sleep Well (1960)

Akira Kurosawa takes on corporate corruption in Japan with a nod to Shakespeare's Hamlet. The concept of honor, is often at the center of Kurosawa's work, as well as a sense of outrage on behalf of the exploited. Both figure prominently here as Koichi Nishi (Toshiro Mifune), plans to exact revenge for the death of his father, a corporate executive who was forced to commit suicide by his colleagues. In the famed opening wedding sequence, analogous to Hamlet's play-within-a-play, an enormous wedding cake in the shape of the corporation's office building reveals the manner of the man's suicide, shocking the guests. The Darwinian atmosphere of Japan's feudalistic corporate world is laid open for inspection and condemnation by the director, as Mifune tries to destroy the company from within. Coupled with the later High and Low (1962) it suggests the high cost of idealism in the midst of corruption. It can be difficult to adjust to Mifune in a business suit, and the relative restraint of his swift economical gestures, but he's again magnificent in part utterly unlike the samurai work for which he's known. The film has a stark, contrasty look, which, along with Kurosawa's characteristic geometric cuts, seems to suggest the moral absolutism of his vision. ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide