Choose The Sword takes a (brief) look at the film series Lone Wolf and Cub. Twice a month, Jon and Chris share their impressions of each film, both on its own terms and its intersection in the Cinema Dual hosts’ lives.
FROM THE BOX: In this exploitation-cinema classic, which took the action and graphic violence of the Lone Wolf and Cub series to delirious new heights, Itto Ogami and Daigoro continue their quest for vengeance through meifumado, the spiritual way of “demons and damnation,” pursued constantly by the Shadow Yagyu clan and the shogun’s spies.
WHAT JON THOUGHT: The question left at the end of the previous movie was, how do you make a second movie when the first felt like two smaller stories stitched together?” The answer, it would seem obvious in retrospect, is to tell two more stories. Oh sure, Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart at the River Styx sets out the new assignment relatively quickly. Ogami (with Daigoro in tow) must kill an artisan who possesses the secret of a particular method for making indigo dye, and is fleeing from his clan into the hands of the shogunate. If he divulges the secret, his clan will be ruined financially and therefore must be killed. Sadly he is protected by the Hidari brothers, each with their own weapon specialty.
I am getting ahead of myself though, because after immediately introducing this plot thread, the movie throws in a side quest which takes up most of the first half of the movie. The Kurokawa clan of ninja spies conspire with Sayaka, the head of a subset of the Yagyu clan comprised of female assassins (or “sword mistresses” which is much cooler to say), in a way that somehow doesn’t betray the truce established in the previous movie. The sword mistresses immediately prove their formidability, and conspire to take Ogami out. They ambush Ogami on the road, disguised as a performing troupe, but are unable to defeat Ogami. A subsequent plot to kidnap Daigoro also fails, though Ogami’s devotion as a father seems to sway Sayaka. She temporarily joins up with Ogami, in one of the movie’s rare clunky spots, a moment that looks to be a possible rape scene right until the last possible second when Ogamis true (and not horrible) intentions are revealed.
With the sword mistresses dealt with, we finally get to the Hidari brothers, first on a burning boat, then in a final showdown in the desert. It is violent and glorious. Do I think that Ogami completing the assignment raises some questions about the underlying reasons for the assignment? Yes. Do I think the film is unprepared and uninterested in answering those questions? Also yes. People need to get murdered, and murdered they get.
WHAT CHRIS THOUGHT: If Sword of Vengeance laid out the foundation for where the Lone Wolf and Cub series would go, Baby Cart at the River Styx (I mistyped “River” as “Riviera” and THAT would have been quite a film) doubles down on its television serial mentality: this is another assassination mission that allows Ogami and his young son Daigoro to reaffirm their goal of going to Hell while being hunted by the mysterious Shadow Yagyū who set him up for murder in the first film. But like any sequel, it makes sure to amp up the things we wanted from the first time…as long as the thing we wanted was more extreme action and violence and not gratuitous nudity, although as Jon notes below we do get an intense and morally ambiguous scene with a sword maiden/assassin that resolves itself into something else – though it also reinforces what may be a cinematic rule that every time Ogami disrobes a woman must be nearby to gasp in both fear and, dare I say, admiration.
Working again with cinematographer Chishi Makiura, director Kenji Misumi makes Baby Cart at the River Styx looks fantastic, with many of the scenes taking on a dreamlike, abstract quality. Sequences superimpose on each other, or fade into blackness at the edges. The camera loves to get close – really close – to character’s eyes. Mythology is also built: I love the narrated sequence of how to hire Ogami by looking for the cairns he builds on his journey. The touches are often small but add up to a larger than life characterization that does just as much for Ogami’s stature as his swordplay.
Also I can see how it would come across as laughable for many, but the scene where Sayaka jumps out of her kimono and runs backwards is fantastic to my eyes.
ANYTHING ELSE, JON? With the slightly awkward tablesetting of the first film out of the way, that leaves Baby Cart at the River Styx free to do what has to date been the series’ strength, brutally violent action scenes. When Ozuno, the Kurokuwa leader doubts the prowess of Sayaka’s sword mistresses, she has him bring out his best warrior, only to have the sword mistresses systematically remove all his appendanges until he is but a stump of a person. Think Monty Python and the Holy Grail’s Black Knight, only not played for comedy.
Slightly less gory, but still great to behold is the long teased showdown with the Hidari brothers. My favorite shot of the whole movie is when the three brothers, standing in an apparently empty desert, stab into the sand, and blood starts flowing up from the sand, as they have cleverly deduced where their opponents’ soldiers have been hiding. While Ogami’s defeat of the Hidari brothers can reasonably be guessed at, the choreography and cinematography under Misumi’s direction do not slouch in the slightest.
ANYTHING ELSE, CHRIS? It feels like Baby Cart at the River Styx ends abruptly with the dispatching of the notorious Hidari brothers, man is it a fantastic climax, starting with the three brothers spectacularly taking care of soldiers buried in the sand, only to quickly find their potent combination of claws, mace, and armored gloves are no match for Ogami’s sword. Before that we get all manner of carnage and another great showing of how versatile the titular baby cart is, with Daigoro getting in on the action and de-footing a pair of assassins in a forest battle. Superpowers are established on a great boat sequence where Ogami after slashing some planks jump and through a burning ship to save his son, and the action trope of “just how badass is he?” is perfectly executed in the film’s final moment where Sayaka stands before him and drops her sword, knowing she can never defeat the Shogun Assassin.
And to answer my question from the previous post, it looks like Baby Cart at the River Styx came out only three months after Sword of Vengeance. And with Baby Cart to Hades arriving six months later, the answer to how they keep the same child actor (Akihiro Tomikawa) looking the same in the role of Daigoro looks to be solved.
THE FINAL WORD(S): For Jon, Baby Cart at the River Styx seems to be where the series really starts to pick up speed. For Chris it’s more of the same with some new visual flash…not a bad thing at all.
NEXT TIME: The adventures of Ittō and Daigoro continue in Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart to Hades.
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