Warui Yatsu Hodo Yoku Nemuru (aka The Bad Sleep Well) (1960)

A young man (Toshiro Mifune) develops an exacting plan to get revenge for the death of his father. This includes not only directly working for the man (Masayuki Mori) responsible and gaining his trust but marrying his daughter (Kyoko Kagawa). But even he is not fully aware of the enormity of the corporate evil he is dealing with. Akira Kurosawa was an admirer of Shakespeare and often used his plays as a take off point for his films. THRONE OF BLOOD (MACBETH) and RAN (KING LEAR) come to mind and THE BAD SLEEP WELL can't help but conjure up memories of HAMLET. So it's quite apt to call THE BAD SLEEP WELL a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions. The film is meticulous and takes its time (it's a shade over 2 1/2 hours) telling the tale but the film works as a thriller too even if you're painfully aware no happy ending is forthcoming but still, you hope against hope. A great film. The entire cast is impeccable and includes Tatsuya Mihashi, Takashi Shimura and Kamatari Fujiwara.