Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance by Kenji Misumi (1972)
Years ago, Ogami Ittō was the shōgun’s official executioner, a task he carried out with diligence and honor. But when the rival Yagyu clan murdered his wife and framed him for treason, Ittō was forced to go on the run with his young son Daigoro. Now working as a lowly assassin, Ittō travels the country while carefully plotting his revenge against the Yagyu clan. Based on Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima’s influential Lone Wolf and Cub manga series — Koike wrote the movie’s screenplay — Sword of Vengeance is filled with all of the arterial sprays that you could possibly want, as Ittō slices and dices his way through rival samurai and ninja with his dōtanuki blade. (I actually paused and rewound several action scenes just to try and better understand the action choreography and Tomisaburo Wakayama’s impressive movements.) Sword of Vengeance does get lurid in places and verges on exploitation territory, but director Kenji Misumi still keeps things artful. You’d never mistake it for an Akira Kurosawa or Yôji Yamada film, but there are moments when Lone Wolf and Cub looks and feels like my platonic ideal of a samurai movie.
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