Critics reviews

Death of a Samurai is a film of hope drowned out by agonized moans from the poorest, most pitiful humans. It's an autumnal melodrama that turns cold, bloody and grey, with apocalyptic skies (like Ryûichi Sakamoto's haunting score) hanging over 3D images of disorder, half-Seurat and half-Manet in their colour and arrangement.

Hara-Kiri still derives pleasure from going through the standardized motions of its genre but changes the emphasis from adherence to obsolescent notions of saving face to an angry tract on social inequality.

The need to unfurl this information, both ritualistically and in bifurcated formal terms, speaks to the unyielding procedural bent of Miike's Hara-Kiri, something that is emphasized here much more than in the methodical but altogether livelier Kobayashi film. In the end, your enjoyment (not to say tolerance) for Miike's approach to the material will likely depend on your appreciation of its still, theatrical formalism.

Hara-kiri's samurai are defined by how they move—or, rather, how they don't. A lot of the time, they're still as statues. In the opening scenes, they're often photographed head-on, placed in the middle of the frame, bounded on both sides by empty widescreen space. Even the close-ups of their faces are composed in deep focus. When the camera moves, it pivots around their static bodies.

What most distinguishes the redo is the often remarkable use of 3-D: Miike turns the format's inherent limitations, especially the tendency toward visual murkiness, to his advantage, fully immersing us in a world suffused with moral and ethical rot.