Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance (Kenji Misumi, 1972)
Cast: Tomisaburo Wakayama, Fumio Watanabe, Go Kato, Tomoko Mayama, Yuko Hama, Shigero Tsuyuguchi, Asao Uchida, Taketoshi Naito, Yoshi Kato, Azami Ogami, Akihiro Tomikawa. Screenplay: Kazuo Koike, Goseki Kojima. Cinematography: Chikashi Makiura. Art direction: Akira Naito. Film editing: Toshio Taniguchi. Music: Eiken Sakurai, Hideaki Sakurai.
The Lone Wolf and Cub series, of which Sword of Vengeance is the first, has something in common with the Zatoichi films, such as Zatoichi and the Chest of Gold (Kazuo Ikehiro, 1964) and Kenji Misumi's own The Tale of Zatoichi (1962): They're about handicapped warriors traveling through hostile territory. Zatoichi is blind, whereas Ogami Itto is simply encumbered with a small child, his son. Yet somehow they beat the odds, fighting off whole armies out to get them. It's a good premise, made more suspenseful in the Lone Wolf films because we naturally don't want to see small children put in harm's way. Which Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance does from the very outset, in which Ogami, the official executioner, is forced to behead an infant, setting up the plot which leads him into a very real hell. Ogami is an intriguing character, which helped me put up with the somewhat routine villainy and violence of the film.