Tuesday, June 24, 2008
And I thought the first one was pretty cool. Holy fuck. This is a two-fisted, super sized serving of awesomeness slammed into your face at high speeds. This one ups the ante in every way possible: it's faster paced, more stylish and, somehow, it's way more violent. There's a part where Lone Wolf (or whatever his name is, who cares) slashes a guy in the face and his whole head opens up like a clam or something. Holy fucking shit! And earlier some people are attacking LW&C, and the little baby hits a switch on his baby cart and a blade shoots out and kills one of them. Later, LW pushes the cart forward at some ninjas, and blades stick out of the wheels and cut their feet off. So even the baby is killing people this time!
Okay, I feel a little guilty raving about this ridiculous samurai movie just one day after expressing some disappointment with Samurai Rebellion, a far more complex, artistic and sophisticated film, which contained much better acting and deeper themes and, you know, visuals delicately crafted to tell a more subtle, emotional story. It's weird to call this one a great movie and Rebellion just a good one, when Lone Wolf and Cub is nothing more than a hollow exercise in style.
But, what style! Hot, sticky, unrelentingly badass style! As much as Samurai Rebellion is clearly higher art, you can't compare movies that way. It's relative to what the individual movie is aiming for. As a serious drama, Rebellion was handsomely mounted but not quite emotionally involving for me, with an ending that was supposed to be powerful and tragic, but instead felt protracted and dramatically inert. The drama in Lone Wolf and Cub 2 is worse (character development is practically nonexistent) however, it's a sterling example of a flamboyant, crazy-violent samurai action picture... probably about as good as it could possibly be.
One complaint? The lead character. He's got a great gimmick carting the baby around, but not much of a personality. Obviously he kills the shit out of a lot of people, so he's badass, but only by default. There's nothing about his non-murder behavior that makes him particularly cool. He doesn't show much emotion, but he doesn't seem stoic, just bored. He doesn't really say anything cool, except when he claims to have dedicated his life to evil, but then he goes and does something good and you know he's just lying to scare his enemies. Maybe he's kind of an asshole, but that doesn't count. Also, he seems too fat to be such a good fighter.
The character could use a little work, is all I'm saying. Maybe they'll develop him more over the course of the series.
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