Awesome, truncated version of the first two Lone Wolf and Cub films, only chopped up and Americanized. While some of the subtleties are lost and character beats are changed in favor of a more streamlined, music video version of the story, it actually works pretty well. Some of it is scattershot, but it has a really good dub and awesome music, and The addition of the voiceover works really well. Classic.

Wow....this is just unbelievably awful. I mean, it's laughably bad in many, many places but at other times it's just almost too bad to sit through. I've watched a LOT of bad movies; for some reason, I seem to be drawn to them. Sometimes I purposely pick out a B-movie, or some old Italian zombie flick, or an "action" movie from the 1970's or 1980's that I know is going to give me a laugh, but other times I just seem to have a knack for finding - and sitting through - movies that wind up being awful. When I saw this movie was produced in 1980, I pretty much knew it was going to be bad but I had no idea it would be _this_ bad. To tell you the truth, I watched this only because of a scene in the Quentin Tarantion _Kill Bill_ movies where _Shogun Assassin_ was mentioned. Since I enjoyed both of the _Kill Bill_ films, I figured a movie that Tarantino mentioned by name probably wouldn't be half bad; boy was I wrong. This is like Saturday morning _Kung Fu Theater_ on steroids. The acting is embarrasingly awful, the story is silly - and completely far-fetched - and the dialogue is cringe-worthy in most every scene. The "fights" are so ridiculous as to make you wonder what they were thinking when they put someone's stamp of approval on this, and overall, there is just NOTHING to enjoy about this particular film. Perhaps I'm not into the martial arts films enough to _"know a good movie when I see one"_ but I can tell you that I've watched my fair share of martial arts movies (I was a hardcore Bruce Lee fan back in the day, and followed several other Asian actors and films). This finds its place in the annals of martial-arts Saturday morning stuff, but that's the best that can be said for it. Overall, it's just terrible and if you find yourself contemplating giving it a watch, just go into it understanding that you'll alternate between laughing at how bad it is, and hating yourself for wasting the time on it.