Kozure Ôkami: Shinikaze ni mukau ubaguruma

A wandering ronin and his young son continue their journey through feudal Japan, taking contracts when afforded the opportunity and facing assassination with each step. This chapter seems dedicated to clarifying our disgraced samurai's complicated code of honor. Though he'll gladly slice through an almost unlimited number of strangers in battle, Ittō's vision isn't clouded by a perennial bloodlust. We see restraint in several dangerous situations, respect for principled opponents, loyalty to his word and, in the film's most memorable scene, a willingness to take vicious punishment in lieu of the innocently accused. The story feels more episodic than ever, with various scenes playing out like a classic movie serial and an unresolved conflict lingering at the credits. Given the rate at which they were churning these things out in the early '70s, maybe there's something to that. The action is reliably good, still fresh and creative after three feature-lengths, though the gigantic slaughter instigated at the climax (ambushed, Ittō single-handedly takes out fifty men and a trio of mounted officers) does stretch things a bit. Wise, then, that the film went back to basics almost immediately after, closing the action with an eerily quiet, respectful duel amidst the dust of that epic battlefield.

This is an AnimEigo re-release of "Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart to Hades" which is the third movie in the Lone Wolf and Cub or "Baby Cart" series. As far as I could tell, these were the changes from the original movie.

1) The English sub-titles were removed and instead the Japanese was dubbed over with English.

2) The left and right edges were trimmed off to fit the image on a standard TV set. This is most obvious at the beginning where the title and related material gets cut off enough that you had to guess at what some words would be.

3) The color is excellent and it's apparent AnimEigo worked hard to clean up the original media.

The DVD runs for 89 minutes. Unlike "Shogun Assassin" #1 which combined elements from three of the Lone Wolf and Cub movies Shogun Assassin 2 is just one movie from the original series. As far as I can tell, nothing was cut.

These movies were infamous for their incredibly brutal and bloody swordplay sequences, but equally impressive IMHO was the leading actor- Tomisaburo Wakayama a.k.a. "Lone Wolf" was surely the greatest martial arts star ever. The command and authority with which he wielded a sword (and other weapons) was just phenomenal. The blade truly was an extension of himself, and his use of it was the definition of lethal, with none of the unnecessary/show-off flourishes so desperately thrown about by today's wannabes. He had incredible presence and charisma- easily on a par with the likes of say Eastwood or Bronson- with eyes that reflected pure death, and the desolation in his soul. There were moments in the "Babycart" series where you'd swear he was the personification of his namesake, the Wolf. You never doubted for one second that he WAS shogun executioner, masterless samurai, assassin for hire. One look at him in action, and you could readily understand why his enemies trembled at the mention of his name, and ran from him in sheer terror. Alas, Lone Wolf is one with void now, but his legend will live on forever in these films.

Forget Toshiro Mifune. Forget Takakura Ken. Forget Sonny Chiba. Forget Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Donnie Yen, and any of those wire-reliant ballet dancers from Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. And CERTAINLY forget any American martial artists that you could care to name. Tomisaburo Wakayama was, is, and forever shall be, THE MAN!

It seems that with this movie, the third out of the Kozure Ôkami-series, they picked a sort of different approach. This time the movie gets a bit more personal and dramatic, which goes at the expense of the movie its action. However once you get over this and get more into the movie itself, you'll still be grabbed and entertained by it as well.

It's not even fair to say really that this movie does not have enough action in it. The movie still features quite a lot of fights and at the end Ogami Itto even takes on a whole army by himself. Still by comparison it's all a bit toned down and there is also less blood. The entire series is basically known for its fountains of blood but this movie does not provide the best example of this.

It's less entertaining but its a more solidly written story than its predecessors, as it seems. The first two movies were mostly adventurous ones in which lone wolf and cub wandered the country, meeting all kinds of people and getting into all kinds of problems. This movie does more clearly follow one story-line, that from beginning to end is basically all connected, without ever wandering off with its story and follow some side plots with it. Not everybody will like this and I must admit that I wasn't too fond about the approach the movie was taking at first but as the movie progresses it becomes more solid and you can also tell what the movie was heading towards to during its first half.

It seems like a weaker movie out of the series at first but once things start to take off you should be able to appreciate it different approach and see this movie as simply yet another great once within its great series.

8/10

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A step down from the first two films in the series, with a story that felt more disjoint, had flashbacks that didn't really add anything, and which lagged several times. Rape is used yet again as a plot device, and when a guy tidies up the crime by murdering the mother and daughter afterwards, he's congratulated for behavior which "befits a samurai," which was uncomfortable, even considering the moral conflict that runs through the series. There are a few nice outdoor shots, but there's a long 40 minute stretch in the middle that's all indoors, and overall it's not nearly as scenic as the previous film. The penultimate battle with what amounts to an army has a few interesting surprises, but the final clash is weirdly drawn out and anti-climactic. I'm not sure if cranking these out so quickly had something to do with it (this was #3 of 4 released in 1972), but the quality level of this one is lower.