A couple nights ago I watched a Kurosawa film I hadn't seen before and I was quite impressed. I don't want to spoil the ending, but The Bad Sleep Well was not at all what I was expecting. A very young Toshiro Mifune makes a play for revenge on the men who drove his father to his death. It has elements of Hamlet and (more strongly, I think) The Count of Monte Cristo, though it doesn't end up like either of them really.
The movie also features the amazing Takashi Shimura, though he is a bit under-used in a supporting role along with a lot of other famous Japanese actors (though, "famous" for Japanese actors from 50 or 60 years ago is a relative thing). The acting is uniformly good and the tension builds well to a brilliant and gut-wrenching ending.
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