The Bad Sleep Well

The Bad Sleep Well
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Akira Kurosawa
Written by	Hideo Oguni Eijirō Hisaita Akira Kurosawa Ryūzō Kikushima Shinobu Hashimoto
Based on	Hamlet by William Shakespeare (uncredited)[1]
Produced by	Akira Kurosawa Tomoyuki Tanaka
Starring	Toshiro Mifune Masayuki Mori Kyoko Kagawa Takashi Shimura Tatsuya Mihashi
Cinematography	Yuzuru Aizawa
Edited by	Akira Kurosawa
Music by	Masaru Sato
Production companies	Toho Studios Kurosawa Productions
Distributed by	Toho
Release date	September 19, 1960 (1960-09-19)
Running time	151 minutes
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese
Budget	¥82.54 million[2]
Box office	¥52.28 million[2]

The Bad Sleep Well (Japanese: 悪い奴ほどよく眠る, Hepburn: Warui Yatsu Hodo Yoku Nemuru, lit. 'The worse the villain, the better they sleep') is a 1960 Japanese neo-noir crime mystery film directed by Akira Kurosawa. It was the first film to be produced under Kurosawa's own independent production company.^[3] It was entered into the 11th Berlin International Film Festival.

The film stars Toshiro Mifune as a young man who gets a prominent position in a corrupt postwar Japanese company in order to expose the men responsible for his father's death. It draws upon Shakespeare's Hamlet,^[4] while also doubling as a critique of corporate corruption.^[5] It is one of four films, along with Drunken Angel (1948), Stray Dog (1949) and High and Low (1963), in which Kurosawa explores the film noir genre.^[3] Like Kurosawa and Mifune's next two movies, Yojimbo (1961) and Sanjuro (1962), Mifune's character is "a lone hero fighting against overwhelming odds and corrupt authorities."^[6]