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Be careful what you wish for!
Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance saw the return of Kaiji Meiko as the titular character. Where the original film was tight and thrilling the sequel felt overly talky and plodding. The story of personal vengeance was replaced with political maneuverings and corruption.The story begins with Japan's success in the Russo-Japanese War with much singing and cheering. The cheering gives way to anger and riots as inflation skyrockets and people struggle to feed themselves. Lady Snow (she dropped the Blood part but no one heeded her request) after surviving her blood-soaked battle in the first film is on the run in the second. Tired and betrayed one too many times, she surrenders. Sentenced to die for her 37 unrepentant killings she's saved from the hangman's noose by a shadowy secret police. They hire her to spy on an activist and once she finds the evidence he has regarding their corrupt activities she is to kill him. Big mistake. The activist, Ransui, reveals the evil ways of the secret police and she joins him. When he is captured and she is injured, the fate of the secret police and their official benefactors is sealed.
Despite the high stakes in the story, I found myself struggling to concentrate through much of the middle of the film. It didn't help that the majority of characters simply weren't likeable. Even the people trying to bring down the secret police were extremely flawed individuals.
The sword fights were standard 1970's swing and fall fare. As in the first film, buckets of red dye #40 spewed during the fight and torture scenes. Lady Snowblood must have had a need for symmetry. One bad guy who had lost an eye, lost another one after fighting with her. She "dis-armed" a one-armed villain as well. The fights were as violent but not as stylish as the first film. Which sums up the movie in general. It wasn't as stylish or polished as the original.
I'm not sure where the title came from. Aside from a gratuitous sex scene between the activist and his wife, the woman he stole from his brother, there wasn't any lovin' going on. Whereas Meiko seemed intense and focused in the original, she seemed almost distracted in the sequel until the fighting began. Snow certainly wasn't casting any longing looks toward the scoundrels in the story. Like her, I didn't find any of them that compelling either.
Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance paled in comparison to its predecessor in terms of acting, fighting, style, and story. Kaiji Meiko still managed to make Lady Snowblood a fascinating character, but she wasn't given enough to do to carry the movie on her narrow shoulders this time. While I found the movie watchable, it won't be memorable.
4/29/23
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