Ichi the Killer
**
Capsule-length
Cinema Review - October 7, 2003
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 18. Japan.
129 minutes. Directed by Takashi Miike. Produced by Akiko Funatsu, Dai Miyazaki.
Written by Sakichi Satô, Hideo Yamamoto. Starring Tadanobu Asano, Nao
Omori, Shinya Tsukamoto, Paulyn Sun, Susumu Terajima, Shun Sugata, Toru Tezuka,
Hiroshi Kobayashi.
Available on video and DVD but touring cinemas
at the same time, here's another inventive gore-fest from the outrageously
prolific Takashi Miike. The story involves a timid nerd called Ichi who has
been hypnotised to commit comically grisly murders whenever he gets upset,
as well as the gang war this Ichi gets involved with after his puppet master
sends him to kill a mob boss.
There's some sick shit going on here: Guys hanging
from meat hooks and getting oil poured over them, multitudes of people sliced
apart by a razor on Ichi's boot, flashbacks to rape that are used for dark
humour. Present through most of this is Kakihara (Tadanobu Asano), a gangster
whose face is full of scars and stitches, and in one scene cuts off the tip
of his tongue, just to show he means it when he says that he's
sorry.
It's not the gore that's wrong with "Ichi
the Killer"; the blood, guts and all the rest are shown quite creatively,
in such extreme quantities that we smile at the visual splendour. What the
movie doesn't have is clear plotting -- the things that happen are simple
enough, but Miike keeps jumping from one group of characters to another and
not making clear how everyone knows each other or what anyone is doing. There
is a charm about the movie's crazy camera angles and insistence on grabbing
for silly visual jokes, but with so much unnecessary confusion, and a running
time of over two hours, you can't quite call it a success.
COPYRIGHT©
2003 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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