User Reviews

This film was originally released in the UK as The Battle.When it was released in the states originally it was called Thunder In The East.However Fil Classics then released it in 1943 under the title Hari Kari.They tried to turn it into a propaganda film.At the beginning there is a written narrative about the "savagery" of the Japanese and how the film illustrated this.Then a couple of minutes before the end a narrator starts up on the sound track highlighting the suicide of Charles Boyer as indicative of the nature of the Japanese nation.They have butchered the film considerably so the narrative is incoherent.However they have totally missed the point.The Japanese naval officer is played by romantic star Charles Boyer,and his wife by British star,Merele Oberon.so audiences are hardly likely to take a dislike to them.The plot as I can just about make out is that Boyer asks his wife to become romantically engaged with John Loder,playing a British naval attaché to extract secrets from him.She falls in love with Loder,bit like Gracie Fields always did!Loder joins Boyer on a Japanese battleship as they engage in a naval battle in which the Japanese are victorious.Loder is killed and Boyer commits Hari Kari as he realises that his wife still loves Loder.The copy I watched lasted 63 minutes,so I do hope that an archive somewhere has a full copy.