There's no let-up to the bloodshed in the third installment of the Lone Wolf and Cub series: At the end, Ogami Itto (Tomisabuo Wakayama) stands alone in the middle of a corpse-strewn field, having vanquished an army of a couple of hundred men single-handedly - or rather, with the help of little Daigoro and the baby cart, which is revealed to be a formidable fighting vehicle. But the most disturbing violence in the film is the rape of two women near the beginning of the film - disturbing because it is treated realistically, rather than with the tricks of style that characterize the film's swordplay. The women are set upon by a gang of idlers, men waiting to be hired as fighters by whoever needs them. One member of the gang, however, holds himself aloof from the raping and pillaging that the others typically indulge in. He's Kanbei (Go Kato), a former samurai turned ronin, who is conscience-stricken, we learn, having been dishonored for an earlier failure to follow the orders of his lord to the letter, even though his actions saved the lord's life. This time, Kanbei remains loyal to the gang he has taken up with, and having come late to the scene of the rape, kills the two women and their servant, then has the three rapists draw straws to choose the one among them who will be killed as punishment for the rape. But just as Kanbei is killing the one who drew the short straw, Ogami comes upon the scene and kills the other two men. Kanbei challenges Ogami to a duel, but Ogami sheathes his sword and calls it a draw. What's going on here is a complex working out of the samurai code, which will resolve itself poignantly if bloodily at the end of the film when Ogami and Kanbei meet again. Which is to say that beneath the flash and dazzle of the multifarious violence of Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart to Hades, which includes an extended sequence in which Ogami is tortured to save a woman being sold into prostitution, lies a moral vision that's both alien and comprehensible.
