SHOCKTOBER SPECIAL: Shogun Assassin - Lisa's Review

NOTE: In honour of Halloween, We're taking a break from the DPP list.

This weeks movie was selected because (although it never made the list) it was often seized by the police during DPP raids, and is often mistakenly listed as a "Video Nasty".

*** SPOILERS ***

So a break from the infamous list for October and kicking off this month is 'Shogun Assasin'. Now I know absolutely nothing about this movie, so as I started to watch, my heart sank. I HATE martial arts movies or arty japanese 'flying through the air' movies, which is what this seemed lining up to be. However as I watched, the fantastic narration by the main character 'Lone Wolf's little son won me over and I found myself enjoying the story.

The basic premis here without breaking down the entire movie is an aging and podgy but kick ass samurai (Lone Wolf) who is set on revenge against his Shogun who killed his wife. The Shogun is a very powerful man (who reminded me of someone out of Monkey Magic) who is served by Samurais all over, so he has quite a few fighters to overcome. The movie follows his travels with his young son after the Shogun and his inevitable defeat of them all one by one.

If its at all possible, the fight and death scenes were artistically shot and wonderfully fast (I hate dragged out fighting scenes) with lots of different deaths by way of Samurai sword (a group who share Lone Wolfs loathing of the Shogun also seem to have quite the love for 4 pronged claw weapons which show up a lot) There seems to be a love by the director for spurting blood which appears in most death scenes.

Scenes which stand out for me are Lone Wolfs insistence for his son to chose life or death by crawling towards a ball or a sword (as he's only a baby). The baby chooses to crawl towards the sword in a very powerful scene, so goes with his dad across the country in the most awesome of prams, counting his dads kill total so he can pray for their souls.

Another scene I loved was Lone Wolf and his sons silhouettes standing against a beautiful backdrop looking out into the distance while blood spurts onto the screen from the side from his latest kill which hasn't even hit the ground yet.

A completely slice in half head was spectacuarly awesome and a sad irony from a guy who finally heard the noise a slit throat makes, but sadly its his own were other scenes I enjoyed.

His toddler son even joins in by engaging some swords from his pram by pressing buttons to release them at opportune moments. One such set of swords attached to the prams wheels, manage to completely amputate the feet off one enemy as it careers towards them. As a mother of a young son I was cringing at his use of his precious son in these scenes.

This movie, although some may find gorey in places, is definately not one for gore fetishists or seekers of the most realistic of gore. I found though that this is not what the movie is about, nor does it matter that the blood bears no resemblance to the real thing.

The style of this movie is unlike anything I have watched before and I'm not going to sit and dissect the story bit by bit, but I loved its brutal, yet artistic scenes and moving narration throughout. It was won over completely for me by the child actor who was simply wonderful as Lone Wolfs son. I also loved the soundtrack to this one which fitted the movie perfectly.

All in all I loved the general feel and style of this movie and would recommend it to anyone with a love of movies and half a braincell.

---

Please use the comments bellow only to comment on this post - to write your own review, please comment on the main post for this movie.