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Lone Wolf and Cub - Baby Cart in Peril
Director: Buichi Saito
Number of Items: 1
Format: Animated, Color, Widescreen
Audience Rating: Unrated
Running Time: 81 minutes
Studio: AnimEigo
Product Group: DVD
Release Date: 2004-06-08

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"Entertaining, still has its style"
In this 4th installment of the series, Director Misumi Kenji was replaced by Saito Buichi -- although I feared the series' quality would deteriorate, I was pleasantly surprised at the nuances Saito lent in his own adaptation.

Still only a third of the way through the manga series myself, "Baby Cart in Peril" adopts episodes from early volumes and introduces a later (for me: unknown) episode that involves (finally!) a showdown between Ogami and Retsudo!

As usual, the film does a good job giving screen time to other characters allowing them to develop. O-Yuki, the assassin willing to bare her vengeance, is a powerful and interesting character. Daigoro gets more and more screen time as in this movie for the first time, he wanders off alone. The little boy is so charming in this film (like the third installment) -- I love his scowls: talk about inhabiting a character. Combined with the nearly concrete stare of Ogami (actor Wakayama Tomisaburo), this movie confirms it still has the magic. Somehow these nearly opaque actors convey incredible emotion. I just wish I knew what Wakayama was looking at -- he never eyes the action or the camera directly.




"This is the review you been looking for!! READ IT!!!!!!!!!!!"
This movie is maybe the best of the Lone Wolf and Cub series and I tell you why:

- I saw four movies of Lone Wolf and Cub:
* WHITE HEAVEN IN HELL is good because Ogami Itto (main character) use everithing he got to kill the bad guys but that battle is more like a Ski battle in a snow mountain.
* LAND OF DEMONS is also good because Ogami battle many enemies in a big dojo with one sword like Uma Thurman did in Kill Bill and he use the lance only a few times.
* SWORD OF VENGANCE is the original and he only use the sword and the lance like in LAND OF DEMONS.
* This one (Baby Car in Peril) is the best because he use the sword, the lance, the machine gun, the two swords, small shurikens and blades like in WHITE HEAVEN IN HELL but this time the settings are in a war camp.

THAT'S ALL FOLKS Thank you for lisen!!!!




"Lone Wolf and Cub - Baby Cart in Peril"
I think this is the best of the first 5 movies released on DVD. The subplot of Diagoro's separation and the main plot of Oyuke's quest are accurate translations from the stories in LW&C Book 4. All of these movies are terrific, and now that the 6th movie has been released, this series is now preserved as one of the best samurai action/historic epics on film.



"Beware Topless Assassins!"
This 4th in the Series, brought to you by the folks that let you know sword fighting was a messy and WET business, begins with a lovely young woman, topless and tatooed, slicing up some men in tip-top fashion. Our hero, the implacable and stone-faced Ogami Itto, former Shogun Executioner presently master ronin assassin, will be hired to dispatch the young lady to the next world.

This entry is the first not directed by Kenji Mishimi, and is told a little more elliptically with many flashbacks that fill in more detail on the backstory of the Yagyu Clan's enmity toward Ogami Itto that lead them to murder his wife and set him and his young son on the road as "demons at the crossroads of Hell". Lord Retsudo, Itto's arch enemy, reappears and there is much clan intrigue and skull-duggery going on.

There is still plenty of fighting and bloody mayhem, a fight in a temple has Ninja arms and legs being lopped off willy-nilly left and right. There is a lot of spraying blood, but there is also the same attention to period detail and the explanation of customs & codes of this long ago civilization, helped by great Liner Notes & Subtitles.

It all climaxes with a hellacious fight with Ogami wiping out another army of opponents, but this time by using the terrain of gullies and ravines to his advantage. He ends the fight by taking Retsudo's eye but is badly wounded himself in the process. But, of course, he will live to fight another day.

Graphic & fantastic, serious and silly, the Lone Wolf & Cub series is a kick if you've a mind for it.



"Awesome"
This film may be my favorite of the whole series. This film features such an accurate representation of issue #23 of LW&C: performers, and the story itself is very moving. O-Yuki is a very sympathetic character that whose quest for revenge is even more admirable than Itto's as she was not only disgraced but violated as a woman. (...) The ending battle scene is also magnificent. (...) While the battle is not as visceral as the one in the previous entry or part 6, this film's battle is still quite magnificent. As I said before, this is my favorite film in the whole series though all of them feature spectacular amounts of bloodshed.






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