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Synopsis: Itti Ogami is the Shogun's executioner (called the Shogun's "decapitator" by his son). He is the most feared warrior in the land--feared, especially, by the Shogun himself. The Shogun has apparently gone mad, and one night, he sends his ninja assassins after Ogami. Ogami is not in his home (he is in the temple, praying), so the ninja content themselves with killing Ogami's wife. This leaves Ogami with a dificult problem. The bushido code demands that he commit seppuku after killing his son. Ogami has done nothing to deserve dishonor in the Shogun's eyes, though, so he views the Shogun's assassination attempt as a breach of feudal obligation. When the Shogun's emmissaries arrive to demand that Ogami kill his son and himself, Ogami slaughters them. He then gives his son a choice: if he choses a colorful ball, he will join his mother in death. If he chooses the sword, he will follow the path of his father, who is now a ronin--a masterless samurai--who sells his skills to the highest bidder. Ogami's son, Daigoro, chooses the sword. They set out to wander the land, dodging the Shogun's ninja at every turn. The Shogun is infuriated by this and dispatches his eldest son to challenge Ogami to a double or nothing duel: if Ogami wins, he is free. If he loses, his life and the life of his son are forfeit. They duel against a rising sun and Ogami soon separates his enemy's head from his body. The shogun then dispatches his second son to reign in the Lone Wolf, with the message that Ogami has won his freedom, but not his son's. This second delegation meets with no more success than the first, and are soon bleeding all over the landscape. Ogami, meanwhile, continues to litter the roads of Japan with dead ninjas (many from a sect of female assassins), en route to his first job as a hired sword: he must kill a renegade nobleman who is protected by three ninja bodyguards called "The Masters of Death" . . .

Idiom and Archetype: In most polite circles, the samurai film has an air of respectability that has eluded most Asian genre films. Most of this stems from the presence of Kurosawa in the genre--the 800 lb gorilla of Japanese art films--and from films like Hiroshi Inagaki's Samurai Trilogy and Masaki Kobayashi's Hara Kiri. These films are great art, sure, but they are certainly not sui generis, any more than are John Ford's great westerns. There is a broad foundation of genre convention underlying those films. Most samurai movies are not conceived as "art," per se, but as entertainments. They are the B-westerns and spaghetti westerns of Japan. In many ways, they are the same type of cinematic experience as the kung-fu film, but the difference in style is as profound as the difference between the action films of, say, John Woo and Takeshi Kitano: In other words, same planet, different worlds...

Manga, Manga, Manga: Shogun Assassin is spliced together from two different movies: Sword of Vengeance and Baby Cart at the River Styx, the first two installments of the Lone Wolf and Cub movies (of which there are six, and they are sometimes called the "Baby Cart" movies, as well). These, in turn, are derived from screenwriter Kazui Koike's immensely popular comic book series, Lone Wolf and Cub. I have been critical of movies derived from the Manga tradition before (most of them animated), but Koike's comics are remarkably cinematic and the translation to film is particularly faithful. More to the point, Koike's comics themselves derive more from cinematic sources than from Manga, so they avoid many of the conventions of Manga (notably their incomprehensible plots). Even compressed into a highlight reel, as Shogun Assassin is, the story is still relatively easy to follow. The American producers have even improved slightly on the original material by having the film narrated by Daigoro (who says absolutely nothing in the original films).

Blood on the Sun: The signature image in Shogun Assassin is the shot at the end of the duel between Ogami and Lord Kurando (the Shogun's first son). In the duel, Kurando comes at Ogami with the sun at his back, hoping to blind Ogami and thereby beat him. Ogami is two steps ahead: he carries Daigoro on his back and Daigoro has a mirror, which reflects the light of the rising sun right into Kurando's eyes. Ogami takes his head in one pass. The last shot of this encounter has Ogami silhouetted against the blood red rising sun and Kurando's headless corpse, still upright, gushing blood high into the air. It's a beautiful image, but grotesque, too. The rest of the movie features bloodletting of similar ilk. The violence in Shogun Assassin is extreme: it is abrupt and messy, yet still stylized enough to make a small claim to poetry. It should be noted that the shot of the guy's feet after Ogami has cut him off at the ankles is one of the nastier pieces of grue in cinema. Since, as I said, Shogun Assassin functions as a "highlight reel" of sorts, the movie is long on these sorts of encounters and short on the "boring" stuff between duels. This works at cross purposes to the film, in some ways, because it transforms Ogami into the "Demon" that Daigoro describes in his narration. In the original films, Ogami is NOT a demon. He has a fierce sense of honor and an even fiercer love for his son. These elements are blunted somewhat in Shogun Assassin, although they are not entirely absent. The constant presence of Daigoro and his wooden baby cart serves as a humanizing element, even as the cart itself begins to resemble a James Bond spy device, loaded with all sorts of hidden weapons. The extremity of violence in this movie, as well as in a myriad of other Japanese movies, leads one to speculate as to why one of the most orderly societies on the planet should have such violent entertainments.

I've seen a number of reviews of Shogun Assassin on the internet. The consensus seems to be that it doesn't replace the first two Lone Wolf and Cub movies, but acts, rather, as a companion piece. I'm not going to disagree with that assessment. In fact, I will go so far as to lament the absence of Shogun Assassin in the marketplace, even as the originals have become the primary version available in the United States. It has, after all, a concentrated bloodthirst that is lacking in many of today's movies, and it depicts an aesthetic of violence that is energizing.