The movie is fantastic, in all the senses of the word. The action is over-the-top in the best action movie manner. There are several absolutely out of place song and dance numbers, in the best Bollywood tradition. The comedy is really broad and completely comprehensible to a Western audience. The biggest "flaw" is that the emotional beats are so exaggerated as to be almost laughable.

A samurai film with Toshiro Mifune and Tatsuya Nakadai is like a Western with John Wayne and Lee Marvin: you don't need to know any more about it to want to see it.

Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) begins as an unlikely protagonist. An IRS adjuster who lives his life by the numbers, every day is much like every other and though he may not actually like it, he has become accustomed and reconciled to it. Emma Thompson narrates his existence and uses his wristwatch as a narrative device to discuss how mundane it all is.

In the West, there's no question that Akira Kurosawa is best known for his period pieces with samurai. From the ground-breaking Rashomon and epic The Seven Samurai to the cowboy-film-in-disguise Yojimbo that inspired Western imitations and Shakespeare adaptations like Ran and Throne of Blood, Kurosawa's samurai dominate the Western perception of his work. To only focus on these masterpieces, however, is to miss the great work he did with contemporary settings and stories. The Bad Sleep Well is such a one.

Il n'y a pas de plus profonde solitude que celle du samouraï si ce n'est celle d'un tigre dans la jungle… peut-être…