Shogun Assassin

Eastern Eye Asian Cinema

Madman Entertainment

R4 DVD

Shogun Assassin is an unusual film. While I tend to prefer to watch films in their original languages with sub-titles, this is an anomaly which makes for a very impressive experience. Robert Houston, five time Academy Award winning film director edited together episodes of the Lone Cub and Wolf series to create a product for the western market. He took the first third of the original series first film installment, Sword of Vengeance and the final two thirds of the second film, Baby Cart at the River Styx and molded them together to create a distinct version of the Lone Wolf and Cub story.

I personally love the original Lone Wolf and Cub series and yet found this unusual edit entertaining and distinct. The Dialogue was re-written and the storyline focused into a very action packed adventure. In this version, Cub (Diagaro) hardly speaks yet the story is told from his angle via narration. This view of the life of a wandering samurai (a Ronin) told from a child’s eyes is what makes the film so interesting. There are scenes of quite ferocious violence mixed with the innocence of a child protected by his father. There are moments of beautiful tenderness such as when cub tries to bring water to his ailing father yet keeps finding it drops from between his fingers or when he leaves his jacket as a gift to the Buddha when he “borrows” food offerings and scenes of wild abandon which border on comic like action, the final scenes with the bringers of death are almost comic in their extreme violence.

The original ‘Lone Wolf and Cub’ achieved incredible success in Japan and was based on a Manga story by Kazuo Koike and hence this “western” version was a great way to bring the classic to a US market. There battles for many years in some countries over the violence in the movie and it was cut in many markets to achieve final release. This is the R Rated full edition release within the Australian market.

The story itself is fairly straight forward and really and excuse for lots of swordplay and wild action sequences. Once the official executioner of the Royal Court of the Shogun, Itto Igami, his wife and son are betrayed, his wife is killed and Itto Igami is challenged to a dual with the Shogun’s son. He wins but is banished and becomes a ronin, a masterless samurai, an assassin for hire. Now known as Lone Wolf and Cub they roam the land, taking on assassin jobs and killing the Shoguns assassins wherever they appear.

This edition from Eastern Eye is a good quality print with very clear dialogue and sound and includes the original trailer, stills gallery and Madman trailers. While I do prefer the original series, this is still a such a unique edit that it really does stand as a film in its own right and is worth having in any good DVD collection !