I'd just recently discovered the "Lone Wolf and Cub" series and having just watched all of them I found them to be some of the best of the genre that I'd ever encountered. I watched them in Japanese with English subtitles and found every one of them to be exceptional. When I saw that "Shogun Assassin" was based on the "Lone Wolf and Cub" series I was excited to see it, but oh what a letdown it turned out to be. Some hacks have taken the original series and cut clips out of each of them, then re-edited those clips into the most god-awful movie I've ever seen, and then claimed to be the "writers". I knew that something was off as soon as I saw that Retsudo, from the real series was shown as the "Shogun". In the originals he was the head of a clan who had stolen the post of royal executioner from Ogami Itto through deception. In the original Daigoro (the son) hardly ever speaks more than the word "Pa", yet in here he is the narrator. The dialog is just plain insipid and has no relationship to the original story. Skip this worthless dreck and find the original "Lone Wolf and Cub" series.In reading all the glowing reviews I have to wonder if they were written by friends of the people who put this together, or by people who have never seen the original series or other great Samurai series such as the Zatoichi movies or other greats of the genre.

Recap: Lone Wolf is a samurai bound by honor to his master. But when said master, the shogun begins to fear him and tries to have him assassinated, those bonds are broken. What is worse, the assassins only manage to kill his wife, leaving Lone Wolf and his young son on a mission for vengeance.Comments: This has a very different style. It is very exaggerated in every way, and I would almost describe it as cartoonish (not surprising considering its source). Everything is either ascetically minimal or over the top exaggerated. Lone Wolf on one hand says almost nothing, but his swordplay is all over the top. Bodies, blood and gore literally flies in every direction. Effects and sound are equally exaggerated to emphasize the action. So it is clearly different from many other movies. If this is in part because its Japan, whose movies often exaggerate to emphasize, dialog for instance, I can't say.If you can accept the style, it is a entertaining action movie. And mark my word, it is pure action. There is very little dialog, and what is said is almost all a narration by Lone Wolf's son. This makes the movie rather one dimensional, but it is not a big problem as it don't seem to aspire to be more. It will never be confused with a masterpiece, but still a entertaining movie that has had a rather big impact.6/10

Shogun Assassin isn't technically any great genre picture, but I remember enjoying it with friends one night when there was nothing else to watch. It's one of those movies for the casual fan of the samurai sect of Asian action pictures (if there can be such thing as 'casual'), but maybe it might have more appeal to the real cult-followers of the ultra-violent films of old-school samurai mania. I actually got it almost on a fluke; it was featured in what now seems like a very clever goof by Tarantino from Kill Bill 2 (the little girl asks if she can stay up to watch this movie with her mother, hardy-har). I won't describe the plot as it would be the ultimate moot point- just know that a samurai is betrayed by his former master when the Shogun kills the samurai's wife, leaving him widowed with an only child, then he goes around the rest of the movie slaying anyone in his path while the child narrates with a dead-pan mix of sorrow and naive pride (albeit with that 'touching' opening speech by the kid). Basically, if you're ever looking for a good excuse to watch senseless blood-shed (and likely on a crappy DVD if you didn't look well enough and got it on said whim, all in line to get an "unrated" version) it's here, as the story wasn't even worked on to that much effect anyway.One could look at this like one of those monster movies from the 60s that got chucked together to make something remotely marketable (Godzilla's Revenge comes to mind); a little label should come on the DVD that says 'common sense need not apply here'. But it is a lot of fun on a senseless level nonetheless, as the "lone wolf" goes about chopping off heads, disemboweling by the dozens, always with the major spray effect and shot like it all needs to get shown in the most bing-bang-zoom quality possible. Unfortunately, unlike for example Riki-Oh, there aren't as many high-quality gags and just overall zaniness to go along with the verve of the ultra-violent B movie, it actually does in its own disturbing way take itself seriously. And it goes without saying that it's almost pornographic in its stylized blood-shed. Yet, against what should be my better judgment, that's what I did end up liking about it, how it went for broke all the way till the final showdown with the shogun. I wouldn't ever rank it with the great B-movies, and it sure will never have the substance of the more classy Samurai films of the 50s and 60s at Toho, but if I ever went on a dare with friends to watch it (or just too drunk to care), it'd be this one I'd pop on.

While at university I was introduced to the original Kazuo Koike/Goseki Kojima 'Lone Wolf & Cub' graphic novels by a half-Japanese friend and instantly became a fan. After a time we tracked down the movie versions and I was pleasantly surprised at how faithful they were to the original material - indeed, in many sequences it was as though the movies had used the Kojima graphics as storyboards for the filmed versions. All was well and good until, just yesterday, I saw this.Shogun Assassin is, in essence, a badly stitched together hack-job of the first two films in the series - Sword of Vengeance and Baby Cart at the River Styx. Eschewing the need for a coherent plot or any sense of pacing, it is merely a crude assembly of all the action scenes of the original films, with all the characterisation and plot development removed to make way for a nonsensical series of fights. It is, quite possibly, the worst editing job I have ever seen and, now that a box-set of the original movies is widely available, there is absolutely no point in seeing it. If you are at all interested in the Lone Wolf & Cub saga then seek out the originals immediately, but don't waste your time on this.