Kurosawa uses Shakespeare's King Lear as a template, but in Ran Lear's three scheming daughters are sons, and the action is transposed to a mythic, dreamlike, feudal Japan. Like an adrenalized fever dream of ultimate power gone awry, Ran reveals Kurosawa's grasp of visual splendor at its most powerful.
This wild love story among the pillars of a rich Texas oil family features a drunken, paranoid playboy (Stack, in maybe his very best performance), the woman who loves him (Bacall), the man who loves her (Hudson), and the half-sister (Malone) who loves him. This oil-family story is way, way east of Eden.