User reviews

Like many fans, my first exposure to the world of badass warrior Ogami Itto (and son) was through Shogun Assassin, an infamous 'video nasty' that was compiled from the 'best bits' of the first two movies in the Baby Cart series, 'Sword Of Vengeance' & 'Baby Cart At The River Styx. A stylish blood-drenched epic, Shogun Assassin piqued my interest enough to make me seek out the entire Baby Cart series (comprising of six films, made between 1972 and 1974).

Sword of Vengeance introduces us to protagonist Itto (Tomisaburo Wakayama), whose job, as Second for the Shogunate, is to execute the enemies of the Shogun, should they fail to commit seppuku (ritual suicide). After his wife is murdered, Itto is framed for treason by the nasty Yagyu clan (who wish to take his coveted position as Second). Now a Ronin—a samurai without a master— he takes to the road working as an assassin for hire, accompanied by his young son Daigoro, who rides in a booby-trapped wooden cart. Together, they are known as Lone Wolf and Cub.

With superbly choreographed fight scenes, wonderful cinematography, a terrific soundtrack, and a great central performance from Wakayama, this is an unmissable piece of samurai cinema. Itto is the Japanese equivalent of Clint Eastwood's 'man with no name': a cool-headed, tough-as-nails, and honourable character who is sparing with his words, and who only acts with violence when necessary (but always with devastating results).

A lethal force with his sword (and also with the variety of weapons secreted about Daigoro's cart), Itto cuts a swathe through all who are stupid enough to challenge him. A quick flash of his blade, and his enemies are either minus a limb or two, or spouting a geyser of blood from a fatal wound.

Sword of Vengeance is a prime example of cool, gritty and stylish 70s cult cinema. Watch it, and be cool by association.

The foremost reason why this is a standout movie-series is because of it's unusual and highly original main concept. There are plenty of Japanese movies about a shogun, ronin or a samurai fulfilling their destinies and travel through the country, getting into all kind of adventures and troubles. The Kozure Ôkami-series has an original take on this type of movies by letting the main character carry and drive around his infant son in an armed and dangerous baby cart. His infant son even helps him in battle sometime. No big surprise that this all is being based on a manga-series, by Kazuo Koike, who also contributed to this movie its script.

It also becomes obvious that this movie is being based on a manga when you look at its violence. It's really deliberately being over-the-top and the entire series is well known for featuring fountains of blood, whenever someone gets struck down or gets a limb or head cut off. It's a pretty bloody movie but because it all gets down in such an over-the-top way, it's nothing too shocking to watch, even when you don't have the stomach for it.

It are really its action sequences that stand out and there is plenty of action in this one. All of the fights got nicely choreographed and brought to the screen and above all things they also often have something original to offer. Often Itto uses some tricks to fool his opponents and can strike down the best trained and most powerful shogun with one strike because of some clever and unexpected moves and tricks, sometimes helped by his infant son Daigorô.

The movie is good looking, thanks to its fine directing, that provides the movie with some nicely done sequences but also due to its great looking environments. The movie often uses nature elements and environments as a key part of the movie its climatic battles, such as water or the sun.

All in all, a great start of the series!

8/10

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I hold true to my summary. Beautiful. I belive that the cinematography is excellent in perspective and atmosphere. Disturbing. There is a rape scene which is not gratuitous in its presentation but is nevertheless disturbing. Bloody. It is a samuri/swordplay film after all. Touching. There is a gruff honor about this film that I truly appreciated. The ideas of duty, honor, disgrace and vengence meet here. If you like the genre I think that you will like this movie.

The first entry in a series of master pieces. Based very strongly upon the manga series `Lone Wolf and Cub' is most likely the best film series derived from comics. And truly great films as well. One cannot base one story on a single comic. There are so many elements in each. There is a basic story, but often times there are mixed with others. Little things are thrown in as well. Normally it would make any less a film seem crammed or just forced in. But it is pulled off brilliantly.

This film, the first entry is largely a set up for the sequels but still brilliant, from its beautiful camera shots to the extremely gory ascetic fights. It tells the story of how the main character Ogami Itto was exiled from his royal position as the Shoguns decapitator. It flashes from past to present until the entire past story is told. The ending fight is a great climax.

The sword work although at times seems fake is brilliantly choreographed. The gore in the film is not overly done, but rather thrown in to give it an artistic feel, as if you're watching a moving painting. Often times one may think every scene could very well be a panting.

Some aspects of the plot may seem odd to most western audiences. The scene where Ogami gives his son a choice between a ball and a sword. Or rather life or death, may strike many people as cold. However one must understand bushido and know that the way of the samurai is life in death. Ask yourself what would be worse taking your son on a trip as you kill men beyond number, or giving somewhat of a choice.

This film is truly beautiful, and hold up today as not just one of the greatest samurai films ever made, but films period.

Kozure Okami:Kowokashi Undekashi Tsukamatsuru/Lone Wolf & Cub:Sword of Vengeance(1972) is the story of an once distinguished samurai executioner who was framed for treason. Shows how the main character went into being an avenging assassin. After the death of his wife, Ogami Itto makes a vow of vengeance on the people responsible for the murder of his wife and his frame up. With his son Daigoro by his side, Itto tends towards the road of assassin as a way to get even with his arch enemy, the Yagyu Clan. His assignment in this story is to kill a few high officers of a samurai clan who plan on killing their future leader.

The action sequences are visually arresting and physically awesome. The sword play in these action scenes are fresh and imaginative. Many of these scenes are gory and violent but not as gory as in some of the later Lone Film & Cub films. Lone Wolf & Cub:Sword of Vengeance(1972) does an excellent job in being faithful to the visual style of the samurai sword fights from the graphic novels. The camera work on these action scenes are free flowing with style and booming with graceful movement.

The film combines the back story of volume one and volume six in the Lone Wolf & Cub comics. The prologue and the first flashback is from volume six. The second flashback later in the movie is from the first volume. These scenes for the most part are faithful to the original source. The dialogue, however is slightly different in the film from volumes one and six.

The first flashback that depicts Itto's frame up by the Yagyu fills the screen with a sea of human emotions. This scene shows the relationship between Ogami and his wife to be caring and tender. The moment when Azami touches her son's face and then dies is very sad. One of the few times in the film and the series that Ogami Itto is highly emotional. Scene depicts Ogami Itto as a man who is bound by the code of Bushido.

Lone Wolf & Cub:Sword of Vengeance(1972) is not as polish or technically slick as the samurai films of Akira Kurosawa. Does not share Kurosawa's eye for the spectacle touch of his samurai pictures. Also, not deep in depiction of human nature and human error like Akira Kurosawa's Samurai epics. The mindset and the beliefs of the samurai is better depicted here. More an authentic look at the period of the Shogun and the fatalistic nature of the samurai warrior.

The scene where Ogami Itto gives his son the choice of the ball or the sword is intense and suspenseful. Its in this scene that Itto and his son Daigoro become the Lone Wolf & Cub. The choice given to Daigoro is cruel yet compassionate. When Daigoro touches the sword his path is more fatalistic and worst than death. A very emotional moment for Ogami Itto because of his love for his son and the fact that their path together will be of loneiness and tragedy.

The love scene with the prostitute and Ogami Itto is erotic yet not overly explicit. Effective in the use of camera movement and dissolves. Scene is well edited. The only love scene that Ogami Itto is involved during the entire Lone Wolf & Cub movies. Shows that Itto will sacrifice the feeling of shame to save a girl who is an outcast like himself.

The revenge motif dominates the motives of Ogami Itto as well as the plot development of Lone Wolf & CUb:Sword of Vengeance(1972). This motif is done in the same manner as in many Italian Westerns. The theme of revenge makes the film pretty much a Japanese Spaghetti Western. Honor and revenge are the two most important things for Ogami Itto. The motif of revenge is a strong force in both the comic and film version of Lone Wolf and Cub.

The Climatic battle scene builds up with an incredible amount of suspense. Awesome depiction of sword play with some gory moments. The camera moves around in a smooth fashion and acts as another member of the cast. The director, Kenji Misumi does the battle scenes in the graphic novel series. Tomisaburo Wakayama is excellent in doing this scene.

Contains a disturbing and harrowing rape scene. The cinematography, editing, and art direction are first class. Tomisaburo Wakayama was the perfect actor to play Ogami Itto because of his physical similarites. Akihiro Tomikawa is cute as Ogami Daigoro. The Violence here is on the level of the blood letting from The Streetfighter movies.

Tomisaburo Wakayama is Lone Wolf and Akihiro Tomikawa is Cub, his three-year-old son. Together they wander around Japan, the youngster in a baby carriage with a sign noting that child and expertise are for hire. It turns out, via a long flashback, that he used to be the executioner for the Shogun. Then the evil Yagyu seized that office and he was supposed to kill himself. So he went rogue and is now wandering around Japan, dealing with prostitutes, madwomen, thieves and the occasional Yagyu ninja.

Anyway, in this one, he trundles Cub to a hot spring for a vacation. It's run by desperate criminals who try to intimidate him. They don't. Eventually, we can be assured, assassins will show up and there will be a colorful bloodbath.

For people who like lots of fake blood amidst some great cinematography, and Japanese acting stoically bizarre, it's just what the audience ordered.

My knowledge in Japanese samurai films is a bit narrow, but I'll take the chance to draw a parallelism between east and west cinema that could sound blasphemous or stupid to somebody who knows more about it. But I suppose, if westerns had John Ford as a traditionalist filmmaker and Sergio Leone as a revolutioner who shattered that sanitized and mythic image and made it dirty and unheroic, I could apply that same logic to samurai films of Akira Kurosawa and then to what Kenji Misumi accomplished in this first chapter. I guess that shallow explanation could serve a newcomer to picture what kind of brilliant and bloody action film they'll find here. also judging from the bloody fight scenes its clear where Tarantino got his influence for his Kill Bill films.

Sword of Vengeance is the first film in a series about a noble samurai and his son fallen from grace through a conspiracy, and now under a constant fear of death by assassination. This movie by itself is a fine example of how a more modern, 'slasher' style Samurai film and 'old' values like honor and '1-good-Samurai-defeats-army-of-bad-Samurai' can be put together to make a solid, entertaining film. The later films are sometimes better, sometimes worse than this movie, but I found all of them to be very entertaining and worthwhile.

If you like to see some classic Samurai action, check out the whole serie of six films. Years later they took all the juicy bits out of the first four films and stitched them together to form the film 'Shogun Assassin', a film I suspect made for export to western countries: Less story, more blood.

I've always wanted to read these manga, so to find out that there is *six* Lone Wolf and Cub movies was an amazing find!

This first live action movie tells their backstory and how they ended up wandering Japan as Lone Wolf and Cub. Sure, its a hokey '70s style movie with blood shooting 7 feet into the air, but the story is solid, and the action fun to watch. I'm thrilled I found all six to watch, so I can get my samurai mode on! 7/10.

This is really two movies in one. The first is the origin story for Itto Ogami, the Shogunate Executioner, and his son Daigoro and how they were framed for a thought crime, sentenced to death, and escaped with their lives. The second feels like just the next in a series of continuing adventures with the pair. I think that there's going to be a larger connection to Ogami's story in that continuing adventure, though. It wouldn't make much sense otherwise.

Ogami is a highly respected swordsman and highly loyal subject to the shogun, a tyrant who punishes his daimyo for the smallest of infractions in order to maintain his political rule. He sends Ogami to complete the seppuku the shogun demands as punishment, which Ogami carries out professionally even in the most trying of circumstances like the first scene that shows Ogami carrying out his duty on a small child who happens to be a lord. It's an interesting setup, showing our protagonist murdering a child as the start of the movie, but Kenji Misumi, the director, leans into the darker aspects of the source manga with open eyes. The crime Ogami was accused of was to put the shogun's crest in his temple dedicated to his victims, placed there in a raid, supposedly in revenge for the killing of the child lord, which killed Ogami's wife. Framed, he extracts a promise to leave him alone from the shadow lord that organized the whole affair.

This is all told in flashback to the actual story of the film as Ogami, a couple of years later, is a ronin, traveling with his son in a cart, as they walk the countryside looking for work. His reputation as Lone Wolf and Cub has grown, and there are even suspicions that the man is the former Executioner himself. When he's spied by a local chamberlain with information that a rival is planning on the execution of his lord. Now, the movie makes no effort to connect the dots between the three men who organize the assassination attempt through a gang of bandits and Ogami's past, but I have to assume there is one that will get drawn out in subsequent movies. Otherwise, this is really just a random adventure that has nothing to do with Ogami, and I don't think that the opening of an extended story with a supposedly definite end would go like that.

Anyway, it's in this part of the story that the movie's truncated runtime works against it. The movie as a whole is 87 minutes long. If all of it had been dedicated to this adventure, I think my problem with its thinness would have been addressed. As the actual time spent at the hot springs with the bandits takes up about thirty minutes and there are about half a dozen new characters of some prominence that don't have any real time to make an impression, I think it suffers. Ogami shows up, convincing the bandits that he's just a man with his child and no more, and he spends his time with the other visitors who are trapped there because of the bandit presence. There's a prostitute that Ogami saves by making love to her in front of the bandits, and she's well drawn enough. However there's another samurai there, sick and unable to really stand up, who is literally just a background character until the large final confrontation where he's suddenly at the fore with some important lines about who he is. The danger to him feels empty because he's not really a character. That, mixed with the mere implication that this adventure has something to do with Ogami's overall journey, makes the whole thing feel like an empty exercise in exploitative action and little else.

That being said, the action in the film is actually quite good. Samurai movies are generally known for one man against many with the one making the perfect slice on most of them as they all go in with swords held up too high for too long, and Lone Wolf and Cub continues this tradition, but it also embraces bright red blood sprays that color the action in entertaining ways.

Overall, the first Lone Wolf and Cub movie is hampered by its need to tell both an origin story and another adventure in the same 87 minutes. The origin story is told well enough, but the adventure gets short-changed. I fully expect these tales to get better with subsequent entries.

The writing is shallow and clichéd, the acting just as mediocre. Even the child aged about two is poor - although probably the best in the cast!

If you like the sort of samurai movies made by Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, or Kobayashi, then dross like this is torture. I watched it because of its incomprehensibly high rating on Imdb and a poll of favourite samurai movies, but really only finished it due to its one redeeming feature: it is short.

If you like samurai films then please try some movies from the aforementioned directors whose every production is several orders of magnitude better than this deplorable offering.

The first film in a great series of samurai films. Veteran Japanese actor Tomisaburo Wakayama, brother of Shintaro Katsu (Zatoichi), stars as the ultra-stoic hero Ogami Itto, who, along with his infant son Daigoro and a babycart with hidden spears and guns, wages a one-man war against the evil Yagyu clan who killed his wife and framed him for disloyalty to the Shogunate. A very well-made series of action films, some reasonably inventive direction, editing, and photography, a good soundtrack too. The action scenes are especially well-done, from the one-on-one sword duels to the Wild Bunch-style Ogami Itto vs. Everybody battles at the end of each film. A must-see for anyone who enjoys Spaghetti Westerns or martial-arts films.

For those that need a cute little kid on top of all the blood spraying and body parts being lopped off? This is an entertaining enough tale, told with flashbacks and some decent fight scenes, though I didn't think there was anything too special about it. The main character is a former executioner who in his official capacity kills a small child when we first see him, so we're in a conflicting universe from the start. He's betrayed for political reasons, and seeks revenge after his wife is killed. Naturally, he's cool as a cucumber when provoked, and can kill large groups of men single-handedly. It's fun but unsophisticated, and seems geared for the adolescent male, for example, taking every possible opportunity to show us female breasts (a couple of breastfeedings, in the hot springs, during a rape, and when the assassin is forced to make love to a prostitute to save her life). It's all gratuitous and the rape is especially objectionable, because it feels like there is a voyeuristic sexualization going on. Personally I didn't mind the quiet moments, but it probably could have used those moments for something more introspective or meaningful than the silly forced lovemaking. However it was probably true to the source manga, and it's shot in a way that makes it feel like manga as well. I liked the pace and how it kept itself to 87 minutes, so that even if there wasn't anything too profound happening, it was a nice bit of entertainment.

Sword of Vengeance is a hugely pleasant surprise. The film is surprisingly mature in its visuals, storytelling, and action. It feels way ahead of its time and it is quite amazing. It is a perfect blend of depth and pure samurai action. One of the best samurai (chanbara) movies I've ever seen. Granted, I haven't seen many. I did hugely enjoyed this film.

Lone Wolf and Cub gets its appeal from its hugely unique style. The subtle intensity of the fight scenes in the sound design (or lack thereof) and cinematography is staggering. There is this powerful aura within the film that is utterly engaging.

Overall, Lone Wolf and Cub is an outstanding chanbara film that achieves a powerful unique marriage of style and substance. an absolute masterpiece when it comes to the samurai genre

I happened to catch this movie one night on the SBS(foriegn film channel in Australia). It was in it's original form with english sub titles. It really blew me away. The narrative just pulls you in - a lone warrior with his child, wandering the landscape in search justice. Similar plot line to all those classic spagetti western's with Eastwood- how can you not like it! And the child gives the film such a unique tension. I've just ordered the later compilation release - Shogun Assa

It's a brutal time in Japan. Executioner Ogami Itto has been set up by his rivals and his family has been massacred. He kills many of his would-be assassins and escapes with his toddler son. He roams the countryside with a pushcart, his boy, and a sign stating "Sword for Hire" and "Son for Hire". He is hired for an assassination.

This is plenty good bloody Samurai movie. It's got a good gimmick and I love the son-for-hire bit. I'm simply wondering if he should only work to seek revenge in the first movie. The movie can open with the baby in the cart as sword-for-hire. Then it needs to spend the rest of the movie as an origin story where he slice and dice the whole shogunate. Finally, the ending should be he and his son taking on their first assassination-for-hire. One expects Itto to continue his vengeance until the entire enemy clan is wiped out. Then the Shogun would surely send his army and he needs to kill them all. That should be most of the first movie. As for the violence, this has got the blood splurting craziness that one expects from a Samurai movie. It's brutal fun.

So, in goes my Criterion Blu-ray disc and up comes the most wonderful bright and clear images of a film from a series I had only previously seen video copies of copies in much deteriorated prints. Not only had my efforts to watch these films been affected by the quality but back in the late 80s/early 90s there was always argument as to the right order further complicated and confused by the ready availability of the rip-off Shogun Assassin (1980) containing a then much debated and varied footage. So, here is the very first in the series pulsating in colour and action. The discussions as to honour and revenge and rank to one side and we are witness to the most amazing shots of the Japanese countryside but more particularly to unbelievable feats of swordsmanship. Indeed this infamous sword goes through opponents like the proverbial knife through butter except with severed limbs and fountains of blood spurt. The cart and child add another dimension and things are further complicated when after crossing a marvellous rope bridge the main man reaches a village being tormented by rape and murder bad boys with even more conflict on the way. A fine start to the series and I for one would have been grateful if imitators had taken note of the modest length instead of stretching things out as was subsequently done far too often.