Yojimbo vs. Harakiri

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8 comments

To of the finest film in the history of Japanese cinema. As much as I love the Mifune/Kurosawa combination I give the slight edge to Harakiri which has a truly fascinating story and powerful narrative structure. It also has a great score and some of the most amazing cinematography ever. Both are brilliant films though.

Harakiri is definitely a great film, but not a particularly enjoyable one. Yojimbo squeaks by in this matchup just for being so much fun.

I thought it was. It's dark and it has a tendency to lean towards being depressing, but it's a wonderful exercise in suspense; once you start to piece things together, your feet start tapping in anticipation, and Nakadai keeps that calm exterior even though we can sense that the man's going to unleash a righteous ass-whooping. It's incredibly moving and seriously badass at the same time. Damn good movie.

Enjoyable, I mean.

Gotta say...Harakiri gets the edge for me...

"Harakiri" is dark, disturbing and striking. Some of its dark and grotesque imagery strikes me as unfortunately. It has a superb performance from Kurosawa collaborator, Takashi Shimura, but the victory of this matchup definitely goes to Kurosawa's "Yojimbo", which is now in my top 25.

Harakiri wins. Yojimbo is a fantastic movie, but Harakiri goes deep and strikes at the gut hard, while Yojimbo is at its core a lighthearted romp.

Disturbing, yes. That scene (you know the scene) hit me HARD. That was really hard to watch, and this is a guy who watches Miike flicks without flinching. Sweet Jeebus, that was rough.

Harakiri is a movie that's stuck with me since I watched it years ago. It is depressing, but awesomely so. It's worth sitting through the misery just to witness the righteous ass-kicking that follows. Yojimbo is nowhere near as potent an experience. I rewatched it recently and was kind of bored.

Harakiri is vastly superior, yojimbo couldn’t touch harakiri with a 10 foot pole. I can’t stress enough how much better harakiri is besides Toshiro Mifune’s performance and Kurosawa’s direction yojimbo doesn’t have anything going for it and for the most part kinda just bored me the first time I saw it.

Yojimbo is nowhere near the class of Harakiri.