Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai (2011)

February 18, 2024 9:32 PM

A tale of revenge, honor and disgrace, centering on a poverty-stricken samurai who discovers the fate of his ronin son-in-law, setting in motion a tense showdown of vengeance against the house of a feudal lord.

77 percent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes

V.A. Musetto's NY Post:

Moviegoers hoping for another Miike orgy of mega-violent torture will be disappointed — or maybe not. “Hara-Kiri” boasts an intelligent script, solid acting and just enough mayhem to keep Miike fans from going into withdrawal.

AV Club's Mike D'Angelo:

It doesn’t help that Miike shot Hara-Kiri in 3-D, which as usual accomplishes nothing save for making the action look as if it’s taking place during a partial eclipse of the sun.

posted by pwnguin (2 comments total)

Grabbed this from the library not realizing it was a remake. Or shot in 3-D. There's definitely spots where the cinematography makes less sense in 2-D -- the snow for example. And now I'm wondering if the annoyingly dark home scenes are an artifact of the 3-D filming.

But the story and theme it is based on shines through, from "the post WW2 era of self-reflection" one NY times review calls out. At a surface level, the story is a denouncement of the inhumanity of the samurai, but it's not too hard to see it as a critique of the empire that inherited this ethos after the samurai were dissolved. The honor code protects those at the top, while it demands the rank and file (here, the ronin) suffer --and die-- for the pride of the elite.

I'm not quite sure what Miike intended the white cats to symbolize. Guess now I need to locate the original and see if it's in there too?
posted by pwnguin at 10:03 PM on February 18 [1 favorite]

I thought the white cat symbolized the young family. The family's dirty white cat is the first to die-an ill omen for the rest of the family. In the opening of the film, a clean white cat curled up in the lap of the shogun and that same cat later watches the final fight. So I think the white cat at the shogun's is symbolic of the spirit of the family or at the very least the spirit of Motome. A representation of the place being haunted by the innocent people who suffered because of the shogun.
posted by miss-lapin at 9:52 PM on February 29