According to Netflix, I had this 83-minute movie for nearly three weeks before I managed to watch it. I'm not sure if that was busy-ness or laziness, but I finally did get around to it on Wednesday night.Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance is the first of a series of movies (six, I think) that adapt stories from the Lone Wolf and Cub comics series -- though I guess I should say "manga," in this context. This one in particular mostly draws from the stories ""Wings to the Bird, Fangs to the Beast" and "The Assassin's Road" (both collected in the first Lone Wolf and Cub digest-sized collection in English).
I read the comics in the recent Dark Horse-published translation (28 volumes -- which, if I'm counting right, makes this the longest single comics story by a single set of creators, half again as long as Dave Sim's Cerebus at about 8500 pages), and they really impressed me. The movie is a bit more conventional and of its time (the early '70s) in its treatment of violence (Peckinpah-derived blood squirts) and -- I think -- spaghetti-western influences. But it still manages to be an action movie that's about more than its action, and I liked it a lot.
I intend to watch the rest of the series, and I hope they don't sit around the house as long as this one did once they arrive.
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