It’s not much of a secret that writer/director Quentin Tarantino takes a lot of inspiration from the more pulpy fare that came before him than, say, movies that are generally regarded as “classics” by snooty film critics. It’s not that Tarantino’s influences are without merit, but they aren’t the ones that leap to mind when someone thinks of an all-time classic. These were lower budget movies, often violent, and their influence is all over Tarantino’s work. Take, for example, the 1973 Japanese movie Lady Snowblood. Originally based on a manga title, it’s the story of a young woman more or less brought into the world to avenge dead members of her family, people she arguably never really met. The movie was a heavy influence on Tarantino’s Kill Bill.

Of course, most of Tarantino’s influences probably don’t have releases as part of the Criterion collection.

Opening with the title character’s birth inside a women’s prison cell, Yuki (Meiko Kaji) grows up to be a great assassin, often dispatching her targets with a sword hidden in her umbrella handle. She arranges with the leader of a beggar organization to keep an eye out for three people, two men and a woman. Flashbacks explain why: before she was born, her mother was headed out to a particular village with her husband and young son. The group, with a fourth, ambushed the family. They had been scamming local peasants with something involving a military draft and decided the man was a draft agent due to his white suit. He was actually the new village schoolteacher, but the foursome killed him and the young son anyway before each of the men took turns having their way with Yuki’s mother. She later stabbed one to death and got a life sentence in prison, but once there, she seduced as many men as possible to produce a child that could finish off the revenge her prison sentence was keeping her from. That child was young Yuki, taken away to be raised by an aunt and a very strict priest. Yuki’s mother passed away not long after giving birth.

Now an adult who has completed her training, Yuki is out to get that revenge. It doesn’t matter what these criminals have done since they crossed path with her mother over 20 years earlier. She wants them dead by her own hand. That actually (and obviously) complicates matters. While none of the three turned their lives around and became reputable members of society, one grew more powerful, one became a pathetic drunk, and the last may have died in a shipwreck three years earlier. Still, Yuki will have her revenge, and while she will take help from any sincere ally looking to give it to her, she won’t be one to back off from the purpose she was dedicated to before she was even born.

Yeah, this one is an obvious Tarantino influence. The opening moments show Yuki confronting a group of men and their crimelord boss, and she dispatches all of them easily enough, showing either limbs removed without too much effort of geysers of blood spurting out of the victim. A later scene shows her taking on a quartet of corrupt policemen and effectively taking them all down with only one good arm after one of the cops gets a lucky hit in. But this one is more than a simple revenge story. Yuki isn’t the only offspring on display as the adult children of her targets also have roles to play as the story unfolds. Not every child stands by their parent, but at the same time, it’s hard not to condemn the ones that do love their families. Lady Snowblood does suggest that violence only begets more violence, and while Yuki’s targets arguably deserve what’s coming, that doesn’t mean she might not also have a target on her own back when she’s finished up her mission.

It helps that Meiko Kaji looks so innocent in many ways as she goes about her business. Yuki didn’t ask to become someone’s instrument of vengeance. She didn’t even know her mother’s husband or her half-brother, and she barely knew her mother at all. The movie does stop to ask what happens to the Lady Snowbloods that may exist once the revenge has been fulfilled. That’s a good question as Yuki has no life outside of her revenge, and she’s only 20 years old in the movie. The movie does explain that she isn’t quite the revenge-driven demon her mother wanted as Yuki still possesses human feelings. Still, what she does next is something that might be worth finding out, and there was a sequel. As for this one, it’s a lot of fun with over-the-top violence and simple characters navigating a not-so-black-and-white world.

Grade: B+

Categories: Movies

0 Comments

Leave a Reply

Avatar placeholder