Product: The Bad Sleep Well (1963)
Rating: 3.0
Confused sources
First, there's an error from Home Vision Entertainment's description on the VHS version. The Bad Sleep Well is loosely based on Hamlet, and the Ed McBain novel mentioned in the description is the source for Kurosawa's High and Low instead.Second, I got past the subtitles on the DVD, but clearly they're English translations of the Chinese translations of the original Japanese. Besides the difficulties making the third-language English sound conversational, the name changes threw me off. I guess the translator used traditional Chinese forms of the names. Reading subtitles is one level of obstacle, not that hard to deal with, but then reimagining conversational dialogue, then trying to follow who's who without being able to go to a list of cast and characters. I'd like to see the VHS version to find out if that has more faithful subtitles.Good movie, but not easy to watch.