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: Unfolding in an idyllic countryside that contrasts sharply with the violence that occurs within it, the third Lone Wolf and Cub film follows Itto Ogami and Daigoro as they continue their journey and stumble upon a crime scene involving a group of lowlife swordsmen from the watari-kashi class.
WHAT JON THOUGHT: While Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart to Hades still has merits to be enjoyed, I think the most accurate phrase to sum up the film would be “wasted potential”, particularly around the new characters of Kanbei and Torizo.
Kanbei is introduced early in the film as the obvious standout in a group of otherwise wretched mercenaries. While they complain about being bored, and wanting to rape passing women on the road, Kanbei (stoically played by Go Kato) refuses to join his colleagues. In fact, when the rest of them go off to fulfill their stated goals, Kanbei stays behind, only to show up and kill the women, their escort, and one of his own guys, in order to pin the whole affair on him. He is clearly in a different league than the rest, and his plans get complicated when he is witnessed by Ogami and Daigoro. He asks Ogami for a duel, who calls an immediate draw, imploring Kanbei to live as a true samurai. Given Kanbei’s final whispered plea for a good death, this could potentially signal a great rivalry.
Unfortunately, Kanbei disappears for the rest of the movie until after the big battle with this movie’s big bad, where he tries to pick up their conversation right where they left off. Ogami changes his mind about them duelling for seemingly no reason, and runs Kanbei through, though not before Kanbei can get in a good shot across Ogami’s back. In the movie’s closing minutes, Kanbei discloses his tragic backstory to Ogami, who affirms that Kanbei is a true warrior by saying he would have made the same choices if he were in Kanbei’s place. This should be a poignant ending, but rather plays like a cheap tying up of loose ends.
If Kanbei’s fate is underwhelming, it’s still better than Torizo, played by Yuko Hamada. Torizo is part of the yakuza that runs a plot related brothel. She is cunning, hot and has a gun. She is clever enough to both stop her henchmen from pointlessly going after Ogami, and also get Ogami to take the punishment intended for the young girl he is protecting from Torizo. In the mold of Sayaka the sword mistress, Torizo is formidable right until she gets a favor out of Ogami. At this point she just becomes a plot device to get Ogami to the movie’s assassination target, a power hungry governor named Sawatari Genba. The plotting here gets a bit more convoluted than usual, but like Kanbei, Torizo fades into the background until the very last shot, where like Sayaka, she’s left behind in Ogami’s dust.
WHAT CHRIS THOUGHT: The bloom may be somewhat off the rose for the third chapter in the Lone Wolf and Cub series, with Misumi and writer/creator Kazuo Koike resorting to increasingly ridiculous action that still works like gangbusters. If only the story being told wasn’t such a tired, rapey drag…
Yeah. I don’t think you can get around the fact that a lot of the “plot” (if you want to call it that) for Baby Cart to Hades stems upon not one, not two…but three sexual assaults. And my brain can reconcile the time period that not only the film takes place but when it was filmed, as well as the trope being one exploited time and time again by exploitation films, and yet I can shake how lazy it is here, especially combined with the rest of the overarching story, which relies way too much on sepia-toned flashbacks and dialog, with the action really only coming at the film’s climax.
There is something being attempted here, a discussion of honor and the Bushido Code, and it’s an interesting dilemma: the film’s climax hinges on a duel between Ogami and the ronin Kanbei, disgraced and discharged from his duties for adhering to the truth of Bushido. Ogami reaffirms his belief (as he dispatches him, of course) by explaining his view of the code and that – given the same choice – would have done the same. Yet, this is also the same Ogami on the road to Hell and in one scene isn’t about using Daigoro as a distraction to kill a henchman who was under the impression his was saving a drowning child. I like how this scene skewers your view of Ogami as the “good guy” of the film, though it doesn’t really hold together when you dig deeper. And you get at least two scenes of “how badass is this guy?” thrown in, as if we didn’t know. We’ll see if that frequency increases with subsequent films.
ANYTHING ELSE, JON? I am enjoying how many secret features the baby cart continues to show. We’ve seen it be bullet proof on the plating on the bottom, and we’ve seen hidden swords. This time around, the cart appears to be buoyant, has a shield to protect against archers, and the secret compartment this time hides a plethora of guns. The preponderance of guns in this movie does seem to one of the film’s true progressions, requiring Ogami to get creative against these new obstacles. The film’s big action finale that pits Ogami against the target’s entire assembled army is still pretty great, even if there isn’t as much of a movie around to support it.
ANYTHING ELSE, CHRIS? Despite my reservations with the story, there’s still some fun to be had with Baby Cart to Hades. You saw the header image, right? Yes, this is the film where Ogami fires machine guns from the cart at an oncoming army. That’s not the only time he resorts to guns, and the film’s climax is insane with imaginative carnage. Just as fun if somewhat smaller in scale in Ogami’s battle with a group of ninjas, first spotted by one of Misumi’s signature shots: a great closeup of faces in the water, slowly climbing out to sneak up on the pair. It’s a rare, bright visual moment in a film that honestly doesn’t have the same energy or creative spirit as the first two entries. Gone is a lot of the more abstract framing, and even the closeups are fewer here.
I will say I appreciated the psychedelic go-go music that frames the film, though.
THE FINAL WORD(S): For Jon, Baby Cart to Hades progresses in its action, but regresses pretty much everywhere else. For Chris, Chapter 3 loses a lot of narrative and visual steam ,but you really can’t argue with a baby cart loaded with machine guns and explosives, can you?
NEXT TIME: The adventures of Ittō and Daigoro continue in Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart in Peril
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