Lone Wolf & Cub: Babycart at the River Styx

The second film in the Lone Wolf & Cub series is, if anything, even darker in tone than the first film in the series - Sword of Vengeance. The first film covered the background of the Yagyu plot to remove Ogami Itto from the position of official executioner to the Shogun and it did so in a fairly linear fashion with occasional flashbacks. Babycart at the River Styx relies less on the traditional storytelling narrative, the mood is darker and there are long periods without any dialogue whatsoever. A tolling bell in the background and enigmatic close-ups of the eyes give the film the character of a Samurai Once Upon A Time In The West or, closer to home, similar in feel to Wong Kar-Wai’s wonderful Ashes of Time.

In Babycart at the river Styx the Yagyu, a mysterious clan with ambitions for power, continue their pursuit of Ogami. As he has moved beyond Edo lands they must recruit the services of the Akashi ninja – a deadly band of female warriors who launch a ferocious assault on the Lone Wolf & Cub. Ogami continues to offer his services as an assassin for 500 pieces of gold, this time in the service of the han of the Awa clan who are in conflict with the shogunate over their economic affairs. The Shogun has sent three samurai, the Hidari Brothers to settle the affair. Otherwise known as the ‘Gods of Death’, the brothers are each masters of specific martial arts. Ogami must stop them reaching the han.

The extreme violence is just as pronounced as in the first film in the series. Ogami moves relentlessly on, leaving the roadside littered with the bodies (and body parts) of the failed attempts on his life. There are some particularly gruesome and gory scenes in this film, particularly when the Hidari Brothers are involved in the fights. Neither the visuals nor the choreography are as well staged as the first film, but in a few scenes it manages to capture the poetry of violence and death so effectively portrayed in Kojima and Koike’s original manga. In one scene a warrior contemplates the red mist of blood escaping from an artery wound in his neck, comparing it to the “Whistling of Wintry Wind”, but mostly the film resorts again to severed limbs, facial mutilation and arcs of blood fountaining onto the camera.

PictureI wasn’t impressed by the quality of the picture on Sword of Vengeance and the picture on Babycart at the river Styx is, if anything, even worse. There are less marks and artefacts on this DVD, but the picture is again very dark and as there are a lot of night-time scenes, it is difficult to make out what is going on. Many of the key scenes in the film in fact are rendered obscure by the poor visuals, taking place in almost complete blackness. The picture is non-anamorphic 2.35:1 and the subtitles are fixed. This means that the image cannot be zoomed to 16:9 without losing the bottom line of the subtitles. The subtitles like the first film in the series are retained from the old US laserdisc releases of the films using different colours when several people are speaking and providing footnotes to explain intricacies of translation and background information.

AudioThe audio is fair – the same basic Dolby Digital 2.0 mono. Again, heavy noise reduction is evident, creating a deep silence when there are no voices, giving the impression that the soundtrack has dropped out.

ExtrasTrailers are included for the other 5 Lone Wolf & Cub films in the series. All the episodes are available on the Artsmagic label, who specialise in UK releases of other samurai film releases on their Warrior label.

Conclusion Again many elements are adapted from the original graphic novels and while the film does eventually fall back into a traditional kind of storyline, there are too many subplots in this episode and too many different groups of enemies for the film to make any sense as a coherent movie. Not the strongest film in the Lone Wolf & Cub series it is nevertheless a decent part of the overall storyline. Unfortunately, once again the DVD fails to do the film justice, so it might be better waiting for the R1 releases from AnimEigo next year who are promising to do new digital transfers from the original master prints.