#841: MISUMI, Kenji: Sword Of Vengeance (1972)

MISUMI, Kenji (Japan)
Sword Of Vengeance [1972]
Spine #841
Blu-ray

Sword of Vengeance sets the standard for the Lone Wolf and Cub titles to come with a strong mix of period-film genre tropes and blood-and-guts splatter, along with a towering lead performance by Tomisaburo Wakayama that immediately thrusts Lone Wolf, Itto Ogami, into the ranks of the all-time great samurai movie icons.

Ogami is the kogi kaishakunin: the official executioner for the Tokugawa shogun and a sword master of great status in eighteenth-century Japan. But the Shadow Yagyu clan, led by the scheming Retsudo Yagyu (Yunosuke Ito), seeks to solidify its power by taking Ogami's coveted position of executioner for its own.

A plot is launched wherein Ogami is framed for treachery and his beloved wife murdered. Ordered to commit ritual suicide, Ogami instead defies the shogun's orders, swears vengeance against the Yagyu clan, and escapes with his infant son, Daigoro (Akihiro Tomikawa). Yers later, father and son wander the countryside as Lone Wolf and Cub — a legendary assassin with a child — who will carry out any murder for the cost of five hundred pieces of gold.

The basic elements of Sword of Vengeance may already have been established by other Japanese filmmakes, but producer Shintaro Katsu and director Kenji Misumi seized upon the creative freedom allotted them at a time when mainstream audiences had largely abandoned movie theaters and exploitation fare ran wild. Working outside the studio system, they made a unique film that moves deftly from graphic depictions of sex and death to a child's-eye view of the world and a deep sense of loss. Fainfully adapted from the manga by its own writer, Kazuo Koike, Sword of Vengeance also works simply as a master class in how to make a successful comic-book movie. But at its heart — and that of the franchise to follow — is the mythic depiction of the parent-child dynamic, best typified by Sword's image of Ogami and Daigoro traveling down a road of revenge surrounded by the elemental raging of fire and water. This is the sweet spot where Lone Wolf and Cub is at its best: somewhere between samurai kitsch and the sublimely classical.

83 minutes

Color
Monaural
in Japanese
2:40:1 aspect ratio
Criterion Release 2016

Director/Writers

Based on the manga by Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima.

Screenplay by Koike.

Kenji Misumi was 51 when he directed Sword of Vengeance.

Other Misumi films in the Collection:

#679a: The Tale Of Zatoichi (1962)
#679h: Fight, Zatoichi, Fight (1964)

#679l: Zatoichi And The Chess Expert (1965)
#679q: Zatoichi Challenged (1967)
#679s: Samaritan Zatoichi (1968)
#679u: Zatoichi Goes To The Fire Festival (1970)
#841: Baby Cart At The River Styx (1972)
#841: Baby Cart To Hades (1972)
#841: Baby Cart In The Land Of Demons (1973)

The Film

A

Film Rating (0-60):

60

The Extras

The Booklet

Thirty-six page booklet featuring an essay and film synopses by Japanese pop-culture critic Patrick Macias.

Commentary

None.

Interview 1

With Koike, writer of the Lone Wolf and Cub manga series and screenwriter on five of the films.

L’âme d’un père, l’âme d’un sabre

A 2005 documentary about the making of the series.

Interview 2

In which Sensei Yoshimitsu Katsuse discusses and demonstrates the real Suio-ryu sword techniques that inspired the ones depicted in the manga and films.

Interview 3

With biographer Kazuma Nozawa about Misumi, director of four of the six films.

Silent documentary

From 1937 about the making of samurai swords, with an optional new ambient score by Ryan Francis.

Trailers

Extras Rating (0-40):

39

60 + 39 =

99

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