A young man seeks revenge on those who orchestrated his father’s death in this noir thriller of corporate misdeeds. The film opens with the wedding ceremony of Yoshiko (Kyoko Kagawa), the daughter of Iwabuchi (Tatsuya Mihashi), the head of the Public Development Corporation, who is due to marry Iwabuchi’s clerk, Nishi (Toshiro Mifune). A group of reporters turn up to the ceremony as Iwabuchi’s firm is under investigation due to potential corruption involving the bidding process for a new development. A cake is wheeled in shaped like a building with a rose inserted in the window of the room where an employee of the firm, Furuya, committed suicide by jumping. Unbeknownst to Iwabuchi and his co-conspirators Moriyama (Takashi Shimura) and Shirai (Ko Nishimura), who were responsible for Furuya’s suicide, Nishi is in fact Furuya’s son and he soon puts his plan into action, alongside another victim Wada (Kamatari Fujiwara), to get revenge on the trio.
“The Bad Sleep Well” is a noir thriller with plenty of twists and turns. While following the basic outline of a revenge plot, the story is teased out gradually with each new revelation landing a heavy blow on the audience. The maliciousness and avarice of the trio of villains is a damning indictment of corporate culture in which profits come before all else. The nefarious scheme, involving forcing employees to commit suicide rather than risk their plan being exposed, creates memorable antagonists only slightly out of the realms of the ordinary. At the heart of the film is an exploration of the rights and wrongs of revenge, in particular through Nishi’s relationship with Yoshiko, Iwabuchi’s daughter. Nishi’s deceit and Yoshiko’s genuine affection for him emphasise the collateral damage caused by him in his quest for revenge. In setting up these dynamics, between Nishi and Sachiko, Sachiko and her brother, the children and their father Iwabuchi, and the various co-conspirators and employees of Dairyu, the ending is far from certain and will come as a suprise to many.
Akira Kurosawa does a great job with this character driven drama, delving into the psyche of some truly reprehensible characters. The nuanced performance by Mifune is at the heart of the story which shows the darker side of human nature. Alongside its blistering critique of capitalist terror it looks at age-old questions of betrayal, greed and revenge. The score by Masaru Sato is a mix of jaunty detective caper and more ominous notes, and the film, despite its depressing subject matter, is firmly intended as mass appeal entertainment. It is Kurosawa’s genius that he is able to balance the artistic flourishes, such as the incredible use of lighting and shadows in certain moments, with an engaging plot; reconciling a sense of fun, blockbuster fare with deeper philosophical questions on morality and human nature.
