The samurai movie has a great and glorious tradition, but Japanese directors have long been of two minds about the samurai themselves. For every "Chushingura" remake that celebrates the samurai ethos of loyalty and self-sacrifice, there is a genre masterpiece that questions it.
One is "Seppuku (Harakiri)," Masaki Kobayashi's 1962 drama of revenge that exposes the injustice and inhumanity of which the samurai were capable. And yet the samurai hero, played with hollowed-voice gravitas by Tatsuya Nakadai, is noble in his pursuit of righteous vengeance — that eternal samurai movie theme.
Almost half a century after "Harakiri" won the Cannes festival's Jury Special Prize, Takashi Miike's 3-D remake, "Ichimei (Hara-kiri: Death of a Samurai)," appeared in the Cannes competition, where it received respectful notices but no awards.