Review – Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai

This is a remake of 1962 movie, Harakiri. They are both set in seventeenth century Japan, but the new version utilises modern 3D jiggery-pokery to impress contemporary audiences.

An impoverished war-veteran ronin, the ronin Tsugomo Hanshiro (Ichikawa Ebizo XI), requests well-to-do samurai-house of Li lend him their courtyard to perform seppuku – a stomach-cutting honour-suicide. Fraudulent ronin make the same request to gain pity-money or employment from samurai houses. The house of Li had recently called one young ronin’s (Eita) bluff and watched him painfully execute himself with his bamboo mock-sword. Hanshiro insists on his seppuku regardless and his story as he commences the ceremony questions the honour of the house of Li. The offence provokes a violent showdown and the wealthy samurai clan take lessons from the working-poor ronin.

This is a pretty good drama about honour among warriors, but just because they shove ‘Samurai’ in the title doesn’t make it an action movie. The majority is flashbacks of slow, grisly suffering amongst impoverished peasants. Bordering on ridiculously over-the-top at times, this is much more domestic melodrama than something action-orientated, but enjoyably so. This begs the question why bother with 3D when this has far less spectacular stunts to showcase than typical samurai genre movies? Unless you’ve got a dorky crush on anything in 3D, you’d best wait for this to get a 2D DVD release, or if you can’t wait, track down the 1962 original.