HARAKIRI

Personal Score: 10/10

Viewing Recommendation: Movie Room

Harakiri is one of those movies that you’d think would be just another “old movie” but was painfully modern in what it exposes. I was very impressed with the cinematography of the movie for it being so old, it reminded me a lot of some of the scenes in Citizen Kane.

On the surface, it is a samurai film about honor, ritual, and revenge. But the deeper I got into it, the more it felt like a movie about institutions protecting their image while crushing real human beings underneath them. It is not just criticizing hypocrisy in feudal Japan. It is showing how any culture can dress up cruelty with beautiful language, “proof” of progress, rules, status, tradition, and “principle,” while ignoring the actual suffering of the person standing in front of them.

That is why I think it still feels relevant in 2026. In American culture, we may not care as much about tradition in the old-fashioned sense, but we absolutely care about being seen as competent, successful, respectable, and in control. People and institutions often care more about protecting their credibility and reputation than actually being honorable. Harakiri cuts straight through that. It asks whether honor means anything if it is detached from mercy, truth, and common-sense human dignity. What is all that reputation worth if it has to be protected by cruelty, denial, and cowardice? The movie is slow, controlled, and devastating because it lets the truth unfold piece by piece, until the entire system it is criticizing looks hollow, pathetic, and afraid of the very truth it claims to stand above.

What I enjoyed most was how intelligent and emotionally restrained it was. It does not need flashy action to be powerful. The tension comes from words, silence, posture, memory, and the slow realization that the person being judged may be the only honorable man in the room (and what a shock it was when you learned that). I think people who enjoy serious films, moral tragedy, courtroom-style confrontations, revenge stories, or movies that challenge blind loyalty to tradition would really appreciate it. It is especially worth watching for anyone interested in how societies hide behind rules when they do not want to face the truth.