Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance

Director: Kenji Misumi, Kenji Misumi, Kenji Misumi

1972 / 84min / DCP

The first of six films in the Lone Wolf and Cub series, based on a popular Edo period-set manga and produced by Zatoichi series star Shintaro Katsu, Sword of Vengeance introduces Tomisaburo Wakayama in the role of Ogami Itto, the shogun’s disgraced former executioner who now wanders the war-torn countryside pushing along a pram that contains his motherless three-year-old son. (As iconic props carried by wandering killers go, its only competition is Django’s weapon caché coffin.) Few chambara have made such fine use of forbidding silence, with Wakayama rarely deigning to speak as he carries out his one-man war against the men who destroyed his life, the Shadow Yagyū clan, preferring instead to eloquently express himself with his sword.