Ichi the Killer
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| Ichi the Killer | |
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| Directed by | Takashi Miike |
| Produced by | Akiko Funatsu Dai Miyazaki |
| Written by | Comic Book: Hideo Yamamoto Screenplay: Sakichi Satô |
| Starring | Tadanobu Asano Shinya Tsukamoto Nao Omori Alien Sun |
| Music by | Karera Musication Seiichi Yamamoto |
| Cinematography | Hideo Yamamoto |
| Editing by | Yasushi Shimamura |
| Distributed by | Media Blasters (USA) |
| Release date(s) |  December 22, 2001 May 30, 2003 |
| Running time | 129 min. |
| Language | Japanese |
| IMDb profile | |
Ichi the Killer (2001) (also Koroshiya Ichi or 殺し屋１) is a film directed by Takashi Miike and adapted from a manga by Hideo Yamamoto.
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[edit] Plot
The film stars Tadanobu Asano as Kakihara, a sadomasochist yakuza enforcer who enjoys giving and receiving pain in about equal measures. To reinforce this, he is shown as having his mouth widened on both sides by several inches, with his cheeks held together with piercings. Kakihara's boss Anjo vanishes one night after he is murdered in a particularly gruesome fashion. A mysterious group arrives and cleans up all evidence of the murder, and takes the three million yen (roughly $25 850 US) Anjo had in his room.
Many of Kakihara's compatriots, including Anjo's English and Chinese-speaking girlfriend Karen (Alien Sun), suspect that Anjo simply took the money and ran, but Kakihara is convinced the man is alive. His investigation leads him to brutally torture a member of a rival clan, Suzuki (Susumu Terajima) by suspending him from a ceiling by putting metal hooks through the man's back, shoving stilettos through his body, and throwing boiling grease (from a meal of tempura) on him. (In an example of the film's extremely black humor, when asked what he is doing, Kakihara responds nonchalantly, "Just a little torture, nothing special.")
The man turns out to be innocent. To make restitution, Kakihara slices off part of his tongue and offers it to Suzuki's boss (Jun Kunimura). However, the man who tipped Kakihara off to Suzuki and may have more real information, a disheveled old man nicknamed Jijii (Shinya Tsukamoto), is nowhere to be found.
Jijii is, as it turns out, secretly orchestrating events. Under his wing is a young man, Ichi (Nao Omori), a confused and apparently psychotic individual who is normally unassuming and cowardly, but becomes homicidal when enraged (and who has crying fits when committing his murders). Ichi outfits himself in a rubber suit with shoes that have razors concealed in the heels, and after spying on a pimp brutalizing a prostitute kills first the pimp, then the girl. Jijii has so manipulated Ichi as to confuse sexual arousal with homicidal lust in him, and accomplished this by creating a false memory in him of witnessing a rape in high school -- which he felt ashamed for wanting to participate in rather than stop.
Kakihara is eventually thrown out of the syndicate for his transgressions, but not before catching word of Ichi. He becomes fascinated with this "total sadist," since perhaps through him he can finally find the ultimate pain he has been seeking -- one which neither his girlfriend nor his boss could give him. In a related plot development, Jijii attempts to get better control over Ichi by having Karen seduce him, but the plan backfires horribly and Karen is slaughtered.
Kakihara, along with two corrupt police-detective twin brothers, finds a prostitute connected with Jijii's gang. In one of the film's more disturbing scenes, they torture her for information (primarily by cutting her nipples off). They find one of Jijii's henchmen and torture him to find out where Ichi is. However, at this point Ichi shows up at Kakihara's compound. Ichi and Kakihara eventually confront each other on a rooftop. The film then ostensibly departs from literal reality and gives us a showdown that appears to take place in the minds of one or the other of the main characters, but it remains deliberately obscure which.
[edit] Cast
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Tadanobu Asano | Kakihara |
| Nao Omori | Ichi |
| Shinya Tsukamoto | Jijii |
| Alien Sun | Karen |
| Susumu Terajima | Suzuki |
| Shun Sugata | Takayama |
| Toru Tezuka | Fujiwara |
| Yoshiki Arizono | Nakazawa |
| Kiyohiko Shibukawa | Ryu Long |
| Satoshi Niizuma | Inoue |
| Suzuki Matsuo | Jirô / Saburô |
[edit] Trivia
- As a publicity gimmick, barf bags were handed out at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) to those attending the midnight screening of this film.
- When Kakihara's cell phone rings, the ringtone is the movie's theme song.
- The Twin cops are named Jiro and Saburo, the names of two characters in Kikaider. They also mention another brother, Ichiro, dead before the movie begins, who is also named after a character in Kikaider.
- The fenced-in rooftop where Kakihara and Ichi battle is the same one seen in Takashi Miike's Dead or Alive: Hanzaisha (1999), where three policemen talk about murder and the Yakuza.
- For the sequence in which his character is suspended from hooks and tortured, actor Susumu Terajima required twelve hours of makeup and other preparation, and then spent twelve more hours shooting the scene.
- The name Ichi means 1 in Japanese, which is why he wears the yellow number 1 on his costume.
- Director Takashi Miike reveals on the US TokyoShock DVD release that the semen used in the close-up during the intro sequence, when the film's title raises out of a puddle of semen, is real. It was supplied by Japanese director Shinya Tsukamoto (Iron Man Tetsuo) who plays the muscle bound mastermind that controls Ichi. Miike gave a bucket to Tsukamoto to fill but was unable to provide enough material for the shot. He passed the bucket to three other crew members to add the remaining amount.
- Director Takashi Miike originally intended to have the author of the original manga, Hideo Yamamoto, write a script entirely in manga form, but the idea fell through when Yamamoto felt he could not complete it due to writer's block.
- Director Takashi Miike was supposed to have the pimp beat up a prostitute with three punches. However, in the end, he increased the number to fifteen because he could not stand the actress, Mai Goto.
- There are two prequels to Ichi the Killer, one a live action prequel called Ichi-1 about Ichi when he was in high-school, and another one called Ichi the Killer Episode 0 which is an anime based on the style of the original manga.
- In the 45-minute animated prequel produced after the film's cult success, Takashi Miike provides the voice of Kakihara.
[edit] External links
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