Product Description

Studio: E1 Entertainment Release Date: 10/28/2003 Run time: 83 minutes

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #55141 in DVD
• Brand: Koch International
• Released on: 2003-08-26
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Color, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, Japanese
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 83 minutes

Amazon.com
"Child and expertise for rent," reads the banner flying from the wooden cart of rogue samurai Itto Ogami (Tomisaburo Wakayama). With his infant son and a baby carriage stocked with a veritable arsenal in tow, Ogami rents his services for 500 pieces of gold while awaiting his revenge on the corrupt clan that murdered his wife. Director Kenji Misumi draws his distinctive graphic style from the legendary manga series written by Kazuo Koike (who adapted his own work for the screen) and adds an inspired cinematic device: when Ogami enters battle, the world falls silent, literally, until his sword strikes. The fights are savage--blades slash, limbs fly, and blood spurts like geysers--yet the film relaxes in moments of serenity and tenderness as the cooing baby boy marvels at the wonder of the world. An essential of Japanese action cinema, it launched a classic six-film series. --Sean Axmaker

Customer Reviews

Fun movie, faithful to the manga
What a great, great movie. I've been getting back into samurai flicks after a long hiatus. I wanted to see this after having seen Kill Bill v.1 -- you can see the influence after watching Lone Wolf and Cub -- and boy, this movie and its vol. 2 sequel (baby cart on river styx) -- great!

Clean picture, clean sounds. This is an awesome DVD. I also read the manga before the DVD and can say: it is very faithful to the manga, doing a wonderful job of bringing the Kojima's artwork to the screen. Readers of Dark Horse's manga series, vol. 1 will recognize the care taken to adapt the manga.

I showed this film to a bunch of friends and they hooted and hollered. Great fun.

LW&C DVDs are full widescreen
Just so there is no confusion, the AnimEigo LW&C DVDs (and all our samurai DVDs) are full widescreen in the original aspect ratio. NOTHING has been chopped off or pan and scanned.

NOTHING!

The DVDs are 16:9 anamorphic encoded, and since the original films are have higher aspect ratios than this, they are letterboxed.

The confusion arises from the fact that if your haven't configured your DVD player and TV correctly (in particular, widescreen TVs), the image can appear either squashed (the Toho logo at the start will be oval) or have the sides clipped off.

What you have to do to get the best video quality is

1) if you have a widescreen TV, configure the DVD player so that it knows this, and configure the TV so it knows it is getting widescreen video. Be careful about TV modes where it displays a 16:9 image in 4:3 with the edges clipped.

2) If you have a regular 4:3 TV, make sure the DVD player is configured this way, otherwise it'll send out a 16:9 signal which will appear squashed on the TV.

LWaC Fans Rejoice!
For fans of the Lone Wolf and Cub manga, this is a dream come true! The movies follow the story of LWaC very well. Obviously, even when transferring the story into six films, some of the 8000+ page story had to be cut out, but all of the important plot points are there. The DVD transfers for these films are amazing. The picture is crisp, the audio is great and the subtitles are some of the best I have seen. The DVD also comes with a booklet that explains important aspects in 16th century Japanese society for American audiences to better understand the story. Animeigo (Samurai Cinema) is currently transferring their entire Samurai catalog into DVD format and this was their first release and it is very well done. Unfortunately, many people have been tricked into getting the "Shogun Assassin" movie, which is a poor edit of the first few Lone Wolf and Cub films into a single and fairly nonsensical film released by another production company. There is just too much to be told in a single film and it is only with the entire six part story (which this film begins) that one can fully appreciate the ultimate tale of revenge that is Lone Wolf and Cub.