Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai

Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai follows Hanshiro, an impoverished samurai who arrives at the estate of a wealthy feudal clan and asks permission to end his life by ritual suicide. The clan's senior official, Kageyu, has grown tired of poor warriors who make the same request hoping to be sent away with money, so he tells Hanshiro the story of Motome, a young ronin who came recently with the same appeal. Hanshiro listens in silence, but he knows more about Motome than the clan realizes, and his request is part of a plan that turns the estate into the setting for a confrontation over honor and revenge.

The film is a remake of Masaki Kobayashi's 1962 Harakiri, directed here by Takashi Miike and written by Kikumi Yamagishi. It was the twenty-fourth of the forty-two films Miike has directed in chronological order, arriving between 13 Assassins and Ace Attorney, and it was produced by Jeremy Thomas, Frédérique Dumas-Zajdela and Toshiaki Nakazawa. Koji Yakusho plays Kageyu, with Ichikawa Ebizo XI as Hanshiro, Eita Nagayama as Motome and Hikari Mitsushima as Miho.

Released in 2011, the film took about 5 million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds 7.3 out of 10 from around 10,000 votes, while on TMDB it has 7.2 from over 200. A critics' rating of 6.7 from 42 reviews places it slightly below both audience scores, suggesting a broadly favorable but measured response.