Both movies were directed by Toshiya Fujita and had the same writing team.
The setting is Japan in 1906, just after the the Russo-Japanese War.
Now it really seems like luck has finally run out for the notorious killer Yuki Kashima, known as Lady Snowblood (Meiko Kaji). She has fallen into the hands of the police. It only took about forty cops to capture her and she was only able to kill a dozen or so of them first.
Now she is about to be hanged. Or maybe not. She is rescued although rescued may not be quite the right word. The secret police have decided that they need the services of one of the most skilled assassins in the country.
So now Lady Snowblood is a secret agent and a government assassin. She’s not thrilled about this but she doesn’t have much choice.
Her job is to infiltrate the house of notorious anarchist Ransui Tokunaga (Jûzô Itami) by posing as a maid.
Ransui has in his possession a document that could bring down the wicked corrupt government. He is captured and tortured by the secret police. He asks Yuki to deliver the document to his brother. For reasons that are never explained she agrees to do so. None of Yuki’s actions make any sense. She has no reason to get involved in childish revolutionary plots and there is no indication that there is the slightest emotional attraction between Yuki and either of the loathsome brothers.
Much misery and violence follows. There are a few action scenes but they’re uninspired and rely entirely on gushing fountains of blood.
Strident political subtexts could be a problem in Japanese movies of this era. This movie is nothing more than an adolescent wallowing in revolutionary chic. Everybody connected in any way with the government is portrayed as a grotesque cartoon villain.
Yuki plays no real role in the movie. She only seems to have been included so they could promote the movie as a sequel to Lady Snowblood. The focus is entirely on the two brothers and the glorious revolutionary struggle. Meiko Kaji gives her worst ever performance but it’s not her fault. The script gives her nothing even remotely interesting to do and offers not the slightest hint of her motivations.
The violence and torture are both nauseating and boring.
This is not a pinky violence movie. It’s a political violence movie. Not only is there no sex or nudity there’s no indication that any of the characters has any emotional life. The heroes are too busy with the glorious revolutionary struggle, and the villains are too busy being wicked and dastardly.
This is a movie absolutely dripping with venomous loathing for Japan, for Japanese society and Japanese culture.
It’s also an extraordinarily boring movie about worthless people being worthless people.
I have seen worse movies than this, but not many.
I’m generally a very big fan of pinky violence movies but Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance is bitterly disappointing. It has no style, no excitement, no suspense.
This movie just seriously rubbed me up the wrong way. If you enjoy incredibly brutal torture scenes you might enjoy it. My recommendation is to give it a miss.
It looks OK on the Criterion Blu-Ray but it’s no a particularly visually impressive movie to start with.
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