Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai | Little White Lies

Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai

04 May 2012 / Released: 04 May 2012

A man wearing a dark robe sits cross-legged on a tatami mat, with a sheathed sword next to him.
A man wearing a dark robe sits cross-legged on a tatami mat, with a sheathed sword next to him.
4

Anticipation.

Takashi Miike follows up 13 Assassins with another samurai epic.

2

Enjoyment.

Gashomon.

2

In Retrospect.

Seek out Kobayashi’s superior original instead.

Takashi Miike fol­lows up his blood-pump­ing samu­rai blitzkrieg 13 Assas­sins with this talky and tire­some peri­od drama.

After the unbri­dled ecsta­sy of Takashi Miike’s blood-pump­ing samu­rai blitzkrieg, 13 Assas­sins, expec­ta­tion is white hot for this 3D remake of Masa­ki Kobayashi’s exquis­ite 1962 film of the same name. Yet while there’s much to admire in this tra­di­tion­al tale of a young warrior’s revenge against a feu­dal lord, this labo­ri­ous, wordy dra­ma is crim­i­nal­ly light on titillation.

The title (trans­lat­ed from the Japan­ese Ichimei, mean­ing One Life’) refers to an ancient dis­em­bow­el­ment rit­u­al known as sep­puku, which is played out in a lip-bit­ing open­ing scene that turns out to be some­thing of a false promise, because that’s essen­tial­ly where the action ends.

A pal­pa­ble ten­sion spits and bub­bles tan­ta­lis­ing­ly below the sur­face through­out, but it’s nev­er quite brought to the boil. Instead a thick patch­work of extend­ed expo­si­tion­al flash­backs weighs heavy on the dra­ma, Miike eschew­ing his sig­na­ture flour­ish­es of vis­cer­al action and play­ful humour to a fault.

Miike dis­plays both ver­sa­til­i­ty and a pro­found affin­i­ty with the slow-burn­ing ele­gance of the god­fa­thers of the genre, Aki­ra Kuro­sawa and Yasu­jirō Ozu. But while this is an intel­li­gent and well-craft­ed peri­od piece, a drop more claret and lot less chit-chat cer­tain­ly wouldn’t go amiss.

You might like