Ichi the Killer
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| Ichi the Killer | |
|---|---|
 Original Japanese poster |
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| Directed by | Takashi Miike |
| Produced by | Akiko Funatsu Dai Miyazaki |
| Written by | Sakichi Satō Hideo Yamamoto (comic) |
| 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 September, 2004 |
| Running time | 123 min |
| Country | Japan |
| Language | Japanese |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Ichi the Killer (殺し屋１ Koroshiya Ichi?) is a 2001 Japanese film directed by Takashi Miike, based on Hideo Yamamoto's manga series of the same name.
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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. Kakihara's boss Anjo is murdered in a particularly gruesome fashion, and a mysterious group arrives to clean up all evidence of the murder, and they steal 300 million yen Anjo had in his room.
Many of Kakihara's compatriots, including Anjo's English-, Cantonese-, and Japanese-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 with metal hooks through the man's back, shoving stilettos through his body, and pouring 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."
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 stuntman 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, find Myu-Myu, 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. He kills Kaneko in front of his son Takeshi, who then goes and kicks Ichi while he is lying on the floor crying. Kakihara soon realizes Ichi won't hurt him, so he inserts two pins into both his ears, to the extent where he is deaf in a suicide attempt. He then looks up as the camera pans to Ichi, standing up in tears holding the top half of Takeshi's head in his hand, with the child's corpse lying next to where he stands. He charges at Kakihara and, following a small fight, embeds one of his razor-bladed boots in the center of Kakihara's head. Kakihara stumbles back, claiming it is the greatest feeling ever and falls off the rooftop to his death. Kakihara is found on the compound floor by Jijii, dead but apparently unwounded by Ichi's final attack, revealing that Kakihara was hallucinating the attack (most likely due to sticking the pins into his ears too far and poking his brain), and thus committed suicide.
For reasons not made clear to the viewer, Jijii himself is found hanging from a tree in the last moments of the movie; whether he himself committed suicide, or Ichi killed him, is unknown.
[edit] Cast and roles
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Tadanobu Asano | Kakihara |
| Nao Omori | Ichi |
| Shinya Tsukamoto | Jijii |
| Alien Sun | Karen |
| Susumu Terajima | Suzuki, of the Funaki gang |
| Shun Sugata | Takayama, of the Anjo gang |
| Toru Tezuka | Fujiwara |
| Yoshiki Arizono | Nakazawa |
| Kiyohiko Shibukawa | Ryu Long |
| Satoshi Niizuma | Inoue |
| Suzuki Matsuo | Jirô / Saburô |
| Jun Kunimura | Funaki |
| Hiroyuki Tanaka | Kaneko, Anjo's bodyguard |
| Moro Morooka | Coffee shop manager |
| Houka Kinoshita | Sailor's lover |
| Hiroshi Kobayashi | Takeshi, Kaneko's son |
| Mai Goto | Sailor |
| Rio Aoki | Miyuki |
| Noko Morishita | Pub Patron |
| Setchin Kawaya | Pub Proprietor |
| Yuki Kazamatsuri | Yakuza Girl |
| Sakichi Satô | Man Kicking Ichi |
| Kaori Sugawara | |
| Hideo Sako | |
| Mako Takeda | |
| Masataka Haji |
[edit] Production
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[edit] Pre-production
Director Takashi Miike intended for the author of the original manga, Hideo Yamamoto, to 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.
[edit] Filming
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.
Miike planned to have the pimp beat up the prostitute with three punches. In the end, he increased the number to fifteen because he could not stand the actress, Mai Goto. 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.
[edit] Promotion
As a publicity gimmick, vomit bags were handed out at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) to those attending the midnight screening of this film.
