Lone Wolf and Cub: Sextet Review

Sword of Vengeance

Ogami Itto and his infant son Daigoro are demons. Once a faithful servant of the Shogun, Itto has now abandoned his oath to the Shogun. He had served as executioner to the Shogun, assisting enemies of the Empire in ritual suicide. This prestigious honour was coveted by a rival clan, whom through subterfuge lose Itto his honour, his home and his wife. Serving no master they travel Japan as mercenaries for hire, taking jobs for a fee of 500 gold coins. While the main plot concerns a job to take out a group of bandits who have taken over a spa town, the meat of the film is found in the flashbacks.

Essentially Sword of Vengeance is the origin story for Ogami Itto and Daigoro. Unlike later films in the series the plot is somewhat lacking in momentum, content to focus on establishing a back story at the expense of any real threat to Itto. Certainly it’s easy to see the film as part of a series, the main villains of the piece are left unscathed, the finale staged against a bunch of cipher like bandits. But it’s this methodical set up which allows later films, particularly the two films that immediately follow, to get to the meat of the story. By the end of the movie the primary villain has been introduced, the character dynamics have been set in place, the back-story has been settled, and Ogami Itto has been shown to be an irrefutable badass.

While the film feels incomplete at times it works with the rather rudimentary plot to create a series of nicely designed character moments and set pieces which builds up to a finale which has plenty of gore and grisly effects to make up for a general lack of emotion. The secondary villains of Sword of Vengeance are a bunch of largely generic brigands who seem destined to die from the moment we lay eyes on them.

But some beautiful cinematography, brutal fight scenes, and some interesting characters make up for the lack of forward momentum in the general plot.