Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai – review

The endlessly prolific Takashi Miike returns with this superbly acted revenger's tragedy. It is set in 17th-century Japan, and also the subject of a classic 1962 movie, also the subject of a classic 1962 movie by Masaki Kobayashi. A penniless samurai, Hanshiro, arrives at a feudal lord's house and requests the only honourable end available to him: to commit seppuku in the courtyard. The household manager warns Hanshiro that a poor samurai called Motome had arrived there with the same plea only recently, but suspecting emotional blackmail from what they saw as a glorified beggar wanting cash to go away, the samurais there had called his "suicide bluff" and cruelly insisted he go through with it. The film reveals a dramatic connection between Hanshiro and Motome, and exposes an icy hypocrisy and abject power-worship at the heart of the warrior code. This has the lineaments of a classic and would make a great double-bill with Miike's 1999 film Audition on the theme of revenge.