Fabrizio del Wrongo writes:

“Hara-Kiri,” the latest from Takashi Miike, has met with tepid reviews, perhaps because it’s 1) a remake of a classic, and 2) defiantly short on action. But I thought it was largely riveting — aside from Bellocchio’s “Bella Addormentata,” it’s probably the most elegantly directed film I’ve seen this year. Miike, the blood-hungry wild man of world cinema, has fashioned the material into a familial drama that has some of the burnish and poise of the first two “Godfather” pictures, and during the long middle section he pulls off a few melodramatic effects that are worthy of D.W. Griffith (it’s much soapier than the Kobayashi version). Sadly, the ending, which eschews the righteous bloodletting of the original, is overly thought out and rather soft-headed. It sacrifices emotional resolution and narrative sense in favor of making a redundant moral point — the picture closes with a discordant clank. Of course, no one registers with the incandescent fury that Nakadai brought to the 1962 film, but I loved watching Koji Yakusho as the head retainer; he gets more out of stasis than just about any actor going. It helps that his face is so sculptural — it often seems as if a torrent is being restrained behind that forehead.

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