Grand Guignol

Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart at the River Styx. Directed by Kenji Misumi. Starring Tomisaburo Wakayama, Akihiro Tomikawa, and Kayo Matsuo.

Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart at the River Styx is one of those films where you will grab your wife or girlfriend, and make her sit down on the couch so she can watch cinematic genius unfold on your plasma screen television. The film opens with a sword fight between Ogami Itto (played by Tomisaburo Wakayama) and a couple of evil red shirts.

Director Kenji Misumi’s use of crosscutting in the opening is even better than what Francis Ford Coppola with that technique in The Godfather. Close-ups of grim faces, severed limbs flying through the air, an impalement, a sword buried in a skull, and geysers of blood make it all quite the visual spectacle.

The plot is about as basic as it gets – instead of white hats versus black hats, Kenji Misumi gives us masterless ronin against evil ninja bent on helping the Japanese Shogun corner the market on fabric dyes, or something like that. The story really isn’t all that important – Misumi delivers on the action, in all it’s colorful Fuji film glory.

I’m usually indifferent to actors, however I thought casting Tomisaburo Wakayama in this series was an interesting move. The man has the body of an endormorph, and it makes the action scenes visually compelling as he looks slow, but tends to move quickly and gracefully. Despite his somewhat soft features, he does have a gaze that is every bit as withering as Jason Statham or Clint Eastwood.

Although this is the second film in the Lone Wolf and Cub series, if you’ve never seen a Japanese martial arts film before, this is a great place to start. If you like Quentin Tarantino films or comic books by Frank Miller, you’ll never be as impressed with their work again after watching Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart at the River Styx.