FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

VeteranLight I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Sarita Rafferty There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Tom Collis I thought they did a wonderful job with this movie. They didn't sell out by making it all in English with American actors. They didn't go crazy making it a bloodbath just to get the younger viewers. The movie really gives you an insight into Japan's history and what life was like for these people. The atmosphere and story telling really draws you in. The acting is great especially one scene that had me cringing. There were a lot of parts where I was like whoa I didn't see that coming. I can understand those out there loyal to the original but you at least have to give the film makers of this remake credit. They stayed true to Japanese culture, they didn't get tom cruise or Keanu reeves to star in it. They didn't write it for the newer younger audience and make all the characters smart mouth kids. Unfortunately I haven't seen the original yet and I understand how those people might not like this one. I don't know how I would feel about a seven samurai remake? I think this movie was well done. It succeeded in telling a truly gripping story without going all modern on it and ruining it. I enjoyed it.

christian Quintanilla The basic plot of the movie is amazing.very original, and like nothing I've seen. The way the director chose not to end the movie with a revenge killing was amazing and didn't leave me with wanting of the characters to die. It made me feel as if his message got through and that his death at the end was fitting due to his completion of what he set out to do. The knowledge of the clans wrong doing set him for revenge but more powerful than blood. It seemed as if he made all the right moves and kept his honor. Unlike the clan. It made me feel content and confused with what really happened during the time of the samurai. The ending made me feel as if the icon of the armor was almost a god figure. When he tried to take it it said to me that the main character was saying to the clan " you aren't good enough to have it". And the throwing away of the hair knots made me think of how low the country of Japan got with the lowest point for me being world war 2. It was a very strong movie with lots of satisfying shots. But the only thing I didn't like was the subtitles. Sometimes they went to fast to read and left me wondering what someone said. Or the translation would be off for me.

Akira-36 I have to say that Miike's jidaigeki or chanbara movies tend to be more consistently mature, well produced and of high quality narration. There are instances of the auteur director's trademark brutality or fetish popping up in one or two scenes in 13 Assassins as well as in Hara-Kiri.But in the latter's case, it's almost entirely appropriate as the camera lingers on the excruciating pain suffered by samurais committing seppuku, the suicide ritual of regaining one's honour.I watched 13 Assassins first, and had an uncomfortable premonition that Miike would shoot a movie with harakiri with its central theme, as 13 Assassins was opened with a painful harakiri scene. I felt that Miike hasn't completely purged his inner demons yet with that short but deeply affecting scene.So now we have a well-made remake, with harakiri or seppuku as the movie's central narrative vehicle. I haven't actually watched the 1962 original, but feels that Miike's version has little pay offs by the end of the story.Don't get me wrong, it is a well told, well acted piece of samurai drama with a strong message at the end of the movie - that by the time of the Edo period, honour in the samurai caste is but a farce or of superficial value. Reading Japanese feudal history, one would even assume that there was little honour to begin with when it came to the samurai caste of the past.I find that the situation that the poor samurai families had to go through during that time was presented with panache, but I can't shake the feeling of fatality and hopelessness in Harakiri. I guess such feelings is to be expected of Miike's movies. His movies are rarely uplifting, although I have to say that I was totally satisfied, elevated even, with the ending of 13 Assassins.Harakiri is bitter all the way through, with very little sweetness. It reminds me of classical novels where all the main protagonists suffer through the story and all end up dying in horrible manners.I'm going to have to watch Samurai Fiction a couple of times to wash away the sadness that still lingers after watching Harakiri.

Hunt2546 Miike remade "13 Assassins" to take full advantage of technical advances since the original arrived in the early '60s. Thus it was more spectacular, a great battle movie that put us in the heart of slash-pierce-hack-crunch-and-filet combat.. Of its kind, it was great and the update made sense. The same cannot be said for his remake of the Kobayashi masterpiece, which was intimate, a rumination on the cruelty and hypocrisy of bushido. A nutshell: an impoverished older samurai comes to a great house seeking a place to commit hara-kiri: he's told a young man tried the same trick earlier, a "bluff" suicide, hoping to get money or a job. But the House forced him to live up to his word, even though he'd sold his swords: thus he committed seppuku with wooden blades. It turns out that the older man is the younger's father in law: he's come for vengeance on the house, and (spoiler) after revealing he's defeated the young man's three primary adversaries in single combat, he draws blade on the house and goes down in a bloody frenzy of vengeance. Great revenge movie, but Miike rewires it. You'd expect him to lay on the gore (as he did in "13" and many of his quickie yakuza films) but instead he dials it way down, keeps it somehow intellectual rather than visceral. Sorry, but I'm shallow enough to be disappointed: I wanted to see heads roll and arms chopped off. (It's a SAMURAI movie, right?) He retains Kobayashi's deliberate, almost ritual like pace and symmetrical compositions, but the understated intensity (SPOILER!: the old man fights his last fight with the wooden sword, so he is incapable of killing the Household guard) of the climax lets the movie end without the emotional catharsis it demanded. A disappointing exercise.