Ichi the Killer

Wow, I certainly didn't know what was waiting for me when I decided to watch this movie... I'd like to think I'm generally hardened, I like horror video games, movies, even read some mangas like Berserk and Junji Ito's horror mangas but wow this movie was a bit too much for me.

Never have I seen such a divisive public when it comes to a movie like this, some people don't like it and some people praise it. I really understand both sides. In fact I first came to know about this movie through a book called "1001 Movies to see before you die" and this movie was amongst them, I really don't remember what was the reasoning for it being there but I can understand in some sense why. This movie is relentless, like every scene that you expect the director to not show the explicitness the director shows it- sometimes I wonder if such violence is needed? Perhaps as a means to not deter from the original vision of where it came from I.e. A manga? With drawings you can stylise violence, make it into a part of the aesthetic of your story and I think that Takashi Miike wanted to do something similar with this and show everything just like in the mangas. Honestly one would believe the scenes involving the titular Ichi would be the most terrible ones because he commits the most gruesome murders ever but since his character and his suit and the way he kills his victims are done in such an overblown cartoonish way it is hard to show it done without it looking very fake with CGI and stuff, unless you want to spend a lot on practical effects which Takashi doesn't so most of the killings Ichi does luckily are mostly implied or not shown a lot in contrast to Kakihara who does drawn out painful torture scenes, these were the ones that I wanted to look away from and had to cover my eyes even! Never have I ever encountered something like this before. It is also interesting how it tries to show different sides of violence from different points of view, both equally brutal.

Violence aside I think this movie oozes style, it has cool camera placements and editing that is really frantic... but I think this film excels the most in how it captures it's characters, the costuming is brilliant- Kakihara's wardrobe is so bright and colourful which is a joy to watch (who's the designer?), same with everyone else on the cast, it is a joy (but also a fright) to see everyone imbue their characters with such effervescence.

A negative of this movie I guess is that the story isn't conveyed really well? Some plot points, motivations and relationships in characters weren't done well enough- which is also the difficulty in adapting a manga to a live action movie cause in the manga you'll always have the advantage of having pages and pages to develop everything. I had to read a summary just to understand what was going on and why some characters did some stuff in the movie. This is also a negative side of the hyperactive and stylistic cutting of the movie, sure it looks very cool but it might confuse more than lead on. Also the ending is a bit confusing, make sure to read the wiki to understand it lol! But as I understood it it's a cycle of violence that repeats itself and that revenge never pays no matter how you do it.

Would I watch this movie again? I don't think so really, maybe look at images of the characters to take inspiration for costuming and such but otherwise I couldn't stomach it- even watching it this time I had to take breaks from watching it and cuddle with my dog before I could see the rest of it. Make sure to watch this with someone because going at it alone is not something I recommend. It made me feel and that is what art is supposed to do, it wasn't pleasant feelings but nevertheless it made me feel, and for that I applaud it. Takashi Miike is brave for doing this but I certainly hope that I won't have to watch anything like it again cause wow this was certainly something different. As I said, I understand why it is appreciated but I also understand why it is hated.

Ichi the Killer is definitely not a film for people who have weak stomachs or who are easily offended. This film contains some of the most shocking images you'll ever see and includes some very disturbing characters that won't be forgotten in a hurry. It is always a very brave move for a film maker when they decide to adapt from a manga as manga often has aspects within it that can not be replicated in to a live picture. Takashi Miike makes the transition possible and blows away all walls of reality with an outstanding and totally unforgettable film.

The plot involves Yakuza boss Anjo going missing with a huge stash of cash, his gang members investigate and a classic game of cat and mouse is involved. This seems simple enough but what is out of the ordinary is that the leader of the investigation, Kakihara (Tadanobu Asano), is a major masochist and Anjo's killer, Ichi (Nao Omori) is the ultimate sadist with a tormented soul. This is where Ichi the Killer's shocking and graphic imagery really come in to force. Miike is uncompromising in his approach with regards to what he delivers on screen. There are no subtleties, no off camera goings on; it is all there for the audience to see, in full detail! The torture scenes, and their results, are especially horrific. If this film had been made in America or Europe, it would have been banned within a second of being made, it's that graphic. What disturbed me more than the disgusting imagery however, were the characters. Ichi's character I found genuinely terrifying as whilst he often comes across as a cartoonish character, there is a disturbingly real quality to his character. Ichi's childlike naivety draws many parallels to past psychotic killers that have existed in real life and his sexual excitement at causing pain and death is incredibly unsettling. Also unsettling is the character of Kakihara. His badly scarred face and clips either side of his lips immediately make him appear a scary figure and the only thing more disturbing than his pleasure for torturing others and watching their pain is his unparalleled love for being beaten and tortured himself.

What I like about many Asian films is that the acting is often very good and Ichi the Killer is no exception. Tadanobu Asano is brilliant as Kakihara. His performance is charismatic and terrifying, he does a great job of making the role his own. Nao Omori plays Ichi perfectly. The way that he can act tormented, childish and merciless all in one scene is incredible to watch and, as I said before, gives the film a genuinely disturbing edge rather than just immense gore. Alien Sun is very sexy as Karen and the way she speaks more than one language in an almost random fashion adds further mystery to this film. The fact that Karen is the only character who has Ichi's past explained to her from Jijii makes the audience able to empathise with her character more than anyone else. Shinya Tsukamoto is also very good as Jijii. His character is unravelled throughout the film and Tsukamoto is very convincing in his portrayal of what turns out to be a very complex character.

The purpose of this film is to shock and it achieves its goal to the point where you almost can not watch. With extremely graphic gore and some intense surrealist imagery that Salvador Dali himself would have been proud of, Ichi the Killer will never be forgotten and deserves to be watched by a lot more people (even if they can only watch it once!). Miike is very clever with his direction. The way he blends Kaneko's flash back sequences with the present does wonders to keep the audience's attention. The ending is also done with great style and is very effective in ending the film so it is down to interpretation of the audience.

Despite being very hard to palate, Ichi the Killer is a fantastic film. Directing, acting, writing and score are all spot on and the quality of the film is very good. Not a film I could handle watching too regularly but definitely a film I'll want to watch a few more times in the future.

Ichi (Nao Omori) is a disturbed and brainwashed killing machine who dresses up in a superhero costume and is controlled by his mentor named Jijii (Shinya Tsukamoto).

Kakihara (Asano Tadanobu) is a sadistic gangster who loves three things: giving and being given pain and looking for the killing machine named Ichi, the person who killed his boss and ran away with his three-hundred million yen. His quest with looking for the mysterious Ichi causes the streets to become a battleground with the gangs of Shinjuku. As the film goes by, the battle with the gangs of Shinjuku becomes more gory than ever.

ICHI THE KILLER is a rare film that we get these days. It contains good cartoon like violence, humour so black yet it would make people laugh, an awesome soundtrack and great makeup effects. Sure, it may not be for everyone but for those that are open-minded or are Miike fans and want to watch something different, this film would be for them.

Takashi Miike is a committed sadist; he doesn't just play around with gruesome imagery, he immerses himself in it. Depictions of mutilation, decapitation, and just about every other outrage human beings can perpetrate on other people's bodies (and some they can't, at least not in a universe where the laws of physics as we know them are observed) have become common-place in movies and on television - half the TV shows in prime-time feature corpses in various states of dismemberment, decomposition and God knows what - but these endeavors only employ sadism as a hook, drawing in adult audiences with the promise of seeing something freakish and mortifying. These works are not involved with sadism the way Miike's are, do not take the same insane relish in inventing new tortures, new forms of mortification. Looked at in this light, Miike's Ichi the Killer represents some kind of high-water mark; it strives for a level of sadistic glee above what even most Japanese shockers do (and there are some shockers out there), and achieves what amounts to masterpiece status. Of course the word "masterpiece" is employed in strictly relative terms here; Ichi the Killer is not my idea of a masterpiece in the true sense, is not even my idea of what makes for good viewing, but one must acknowledge what Miike has created - nothing more or less than a classic in the field of shock cinema.

It's inevitable that such a film would be based on a manga (that's a Japanese comic book for those of you not up on dork-culture (anyone reading this review who feels the need to fill me in on the history of manga, by way of explaining to me how they are not simply "comic books," need not bother, for I do not care)), which are apparently viewed as inspiration treasure-troves among those fascinated by nihilism, flesh-mortification, misogyny and the eternally mysterious, ritual-happy world of the Yakuza. Ichi the Killer gives us all of the above in spades. Its title character is a kind of demented anti-super-hero, a dopey, quivering, brainwashed wreck of a kid bent on ridding the world of all bullies, who dresses up in a nutty Darth-Vader-type outfit (sans mask) equipped with retractable blades that spring out when he performs his martial arts maneuvers, neatly slicing and dicing anyone who gets in the way (Ichi is rather indiscriminate about who he kills; we're led to believe that he has been programmed by his vengeful handler to murder only bad guys, but apparently the programming is a bit dodgy). A regular movie would show Ichi lopping people's heads off, severing the occasional jugular, but Miike is not content with such pedestrian amusements, and pushes things to such outrageous levels that our only sane reaction is to laugh. Miike fills whole rooms with dismembered bodies, spilled guts, blood, decapitated heads, achieving a level of carnage so over-the-top that it becomes surrealist comedy, Ichi a figure not of pity or menace but high sadistic hilarity, a murderous, brainwashed Jerry Lewis. As funny as Ichi is, however, he is not the funniest character in the movie; that distinction belongs to Kakihara, a Yakuza whose favorite pastimes are, in order, inflicting pain on other people, and inflicting pain on himself. Kakihara is a bod-mod freak; his face is covered with strategic scars, his body adorned with tattoos, but his most outrageous mods are the slashes in his cheeks, through which he exhales puffs of cigarette smoke, and which allow him to perform feats of mastication unheard of in human history. The acts of mutilation carried out by people on others in Ichi the Killer are scarcely more outrageous than those carried out by Kakihara upon himself; he feels compelled at one point to slice the end of his own tongue off (the ring through the end of it makes a nice handle to hold while doing the slicing; clever boy, that Kakihara).

If this all sounds like too much - well, it is, and that's kind of the point. Miike, like many of his brethren in Asian film, is obsessed with shock-effects, with pushing outrage to a level heretofore unseen in cinema, and by virtue of films like Ichi the Killer has become the godfather of the form. Sure, there are moments of Ichi the Killer where Miike wants us to be touched - he shows Ichi being nice to a little kid, encouraging us to see Ichi as some poor fool with a kindly heart whose brain has been led astray by evil forces - but Miike is only really serious about visualizing torture, mutilation and extreme bod-mod activities as bloodily as possible. Ichi the Killer is a compendium of outrage, and it succeeds only as long as it's delivering on its promise of ever-more-brutal tortures, ever-more-insane forms of self-inflicted harm. It is, of course, a reprehensible movie filled with simulated acts of violence so sick as to make even battle-hardened extreme-cinema fans squirm in their seats, but it's done with so much humor, so much gleeful flair, that you can't help being taken in by it. Its attitude toward existence is purely nihilistic, but damned if it doesn't have fun exposing the essential cruelty of life, the animal nature of human beings. Miike is one sick puppy, but he seems aware of how sick he is, and doesn't try to dress up his outrages with a lot of pretty visual effects or Hollywood-style gloss. Miike is something of a minimalist when it comes to the camera; he tends just to point it and shoot, punctuating the action with stylistic flourishes rather than drowning his movies in style. It isn't even cinema itself that Miike seems primarily interested in, it's the chance to realize his twisted fantasies. He gets away with it because, unlike a lot of would-be sadists, he owns his fantasies, and seems to acknowledge his own twistedness.

Be warned - as early as the film's titles - letters rising from fallen sperm - (The costumed killer ejaculated voyeuristically watching violence done by one of the other team of gangster killers). You should either run screaming from the theater or stay for an over-the-top exercise in so much violence it becomes white noise and almost disappears. Seen at the Cinematheque, here in Los Angeles, with an adult crowd - this unrated but surely X-cubed film was a delight to those who stayed A few patrons fled in the middle of the screening but most got the point. Bad guys pursuing bad guys - with genre formula being trashed at every point - the humor built and built. Any good characters (children included) were decimated or tortured. None were spared. Yet the film is a romp - from the complaining co-workers who grumble about having to clean up blood-drenched murder scenes (they found intestines everywhere) to the sado-masochistic special effects. The film has left turns into fantasy - then back again - it has intentional bad-acting scenes (from previously capable actors)- the camera work has a will of it sown - exposition that makes no sense.

This film posits the questions: If you are going to be a bad-boy film director and take screen violence as far as it can go - no farther than that - NO REALLY FARTHER THAN THAT - to the point of blood almost every minute - what would the result be? Apparently the director feels that on the far side of excess violence and blood letting in glorious technicolor and grotesque special effects, the cinema would revert to a twisted sense of innocence (beyond all that killing there is a comic sense of the universe).

A film that should be seen - but you should be prepared for it. Not a classic - but a definite statement - more a cinema-artist's statement than a traditional film. Museums will find a place for it - families will abhor it.

I got into it to my amazement. It stretched my mind about what should be so.