Lone Wolf Isazo

                   
Director: Ikehiro Kazuo
Year: 1968
Rating: 7.5
A man's pride made him leave his love

Now a roaming gambler

Lone Wolf, where are you going?

So goes the opening theme song of this most western of Samurai films. Isazo the Lone Wolf. Isazo the Gambler. Isazo the Ripper. Many names but only one fate. To wander the country from town to town, from gambling parlor to gambling parlor, from killing job to killing job. Living by the code of the Yakuza. You fulfill your obligations. This sadly was one of Raizô Ichikawa's last films as he was to die at 37 from colon cancer the following year. I expect this would have been a series of films like his Sleepy Eyes of Death series. It is a great character that he plays here - in some ways typical of heroes in Westerns. Taciturn, deadly, a loner, little compassion, no friends but with a moral structure that he lives by. And some day will die by.



The film spools out in a near folkloric manner as a few men sit around a fire grilling food and one asks Age Matsu (Isamu Nagato) if it is true that he knows Isazo, a legendary figure in the world of wanderers. And Matsu tells them when he first met Isazo on a snowy mountainside as three men tried to kill him for "raping a woman". One loses his arm, the other two are knocked down. Isazo doesn't kill if he doesn't have to but he hires himself out to be a killer when not gambling. He never stays in the same town for longer than three days - otherwise you are being rude. And as a guest you only have one soup, one main meal and two bowls of rice. To eat more would be rude. It is small bits like this that give the film some depth.



Age Matsu continues his tale of his meetings with Isazo until they end up facing one another on the battlefield. There is of course a back story to Isazo. Isn't there always. One that set him on this path of the Yakuza life, of his refusal to be anything but a shadow passing through the land. It involves a woman (Mayumi Ogawa) and a small boy. The woman of the song. There isn't really that much action and when there is it is usually swift. It is more of a drama with spurts of action. Unfortunately, the final action set piece plays out at night and on my dvd it is quite murky. Directed by Ikehiro Kazuo who directed a number of the Zatoichi and Sleep Eyes of Death films.