Writer(s): Sakichi Satô, based on a comic by Hideo Yamamoto
Starring: Tadanobu Asano, Nao Ômori, and Shin'ya Tsukamoto
I lived a pretty sheltered “movie life” back from the time I
was a kid, to the time I was in my mid-teens. You know that kid that was never
allowed watching “R”-rated movies, even though he was in high school? That was me.
I think that is at least part of the reason why once the ban on “R”
movies was lifted, and I was allowed watching whatever I wanted, I tended to
seek out the most vile stuff I could, almost as if making up for all the lost
time (though I still at least tend to avoid some stuff, like the Faces of
Death series, and most things with no artistic merit whatsoever).
One movie I’d heard about was Takashi Miike’s Ichi the
Killer. I’m not exactly sure when I
first stumbled across it, probably in my early twenties, but all I remember was
being eager to see what all the hype was about.
So I simply downloaded it illegally, skimmed through some scenes as
quickly as I could, saw a few terribly-done CGI sequences, and, majorly
disappointed, never went back to it, eventually deleting it from my computer
and deeming it nothing more than a waste of time.
Just recently, I re-stumbled upon it, and got my wife
interested in seeing it with me, something that wasn’t very hard once I
mentioned there was a lot of violence involved.
Rather than going the illegal route (something I’ve cut back tremendously
on since getting rid of cable and getting Netflix), I borrowed it from, of all
places, the local library, and we settled down to watch the whole thing, rather
than the bits and pieces I had settled for so many years ago.
The plot in this one is similar to the flimsy plots of many
slasher movies, in that its only function is to allow as much carnage as
possible: Kakihara is a sadomasochistic
hitman, looking for the boss of his yakuza organization. When he carries out hits, he doesn’t just put
a bullet in the victim, he draws it out as violently, and as painfully, as
possible. Yet word starts spreading
around about a man named Ichi, a psychotic, emotionally-fragile man who’s also
targeting yakuza members; and the stage is set for both men’s paths’ to cross,
though of course, director Takashi Miike (who directed the excellent Audition) throws in plenty of hapless victims for both along the way.
Watching the uncut version in its entirety, gave me a new
appreciation for the film’s violence, which alternates, sometimes
uncomfortably, between brutal realism, and almost-slapstick
ridiculousness. There are certainly a
couple horrible moments of laughable early-CGI attempts (a character getting
cut in half is so fake-looking, that it immediately reminds one of those
terrible “Syfy Original Movies”), but thankfully these bad effects are limited
to just a couple of times in the movie’s two hour-plus runtime.
The performances are interesting across the board, but it
stands to reason that the two most interesting would be Tadanobu Asano’s Kakihachi,
and Nao Omori’s Ichi…both of them are mentally unstable, psychotic killers, but
they both approach their murders in very different ways, which makes for an
interesting character study of sorts, of which the likes very few directors
could have pulled off.
I did find the running time to be a tad on the excessive
side—it feels like such a thinly-plotted movie easily could have ended
somewhere around twenty minutes sooner—but overall, this is a creative,
original, taboo-shattering film that anyone with even a remote interest in
extreme cinema should check out.
RECAP: Takashi Miike’s off-the-wall yakuza flick features an
absurd amount of violence, often taken to comedic extremes, and seems to get
its kicks from shattering taboos (I can honestly say there are a few things in
this movie that I can’t say I’ve ever seen in a movie before), but its
creative, freewheeling effectiveness is somewhat marred by an overlong running
time, and a few laughably bad CGI effects.
Still worth a watch for anyone even remotely interested in extreme
cinema.
OVERALL: 7.5/10
TRAILER
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