Ichi the Killer

 

How the hell do I review Ichi the Killer? It’s a hard movie to really talk about, since the only way I can really think to describe it is as ‘a Takashi Miike film’, and you’ll either know instantly what that means or you’ll have no idea. Well, here goes anyway; it’s a Takashi Miike film, and probably his most iconic, violent and controversial – whenever Miike is mentioned or namechecked Ichi is mentioned as well, often along with Audition. It is a showcase of the style, themes and content of a very prolific director who has made everything from children’s films, videogame adaptations, documentaries, serious dramas and horror films. Ichi, however, is a Yakuza film, a very specific genre Miike has inhabited for decades.

It’s violent, gory, sadistic, depraved, psychotic and darkly funny with a morbid sense of humour. The plot is thin, the characters are weird and the ending is strange, unexplained and open to interpretation. It’s the sort of movie that’s hard to compare to anything, other than Miike’s other movies. There are traces of his earlier films in there, like Dead or Alive or Fudoh: The New Generation, but Ichi is exceptionally out there, focusing on sadists and masochists in a pretty blunt way. The film’s title appears in a puddle of semen after the titular Ichi masturbates while watching a pimp brutally beat and rape a prostitute. That opening, with its rapid editing and frantic music, really sum up what to expect from the film. It’s strange, brutal and uncompromising, and so thoroughly watchable it’s bizarre.

Jijii, a minor member in the Japanese criminal underworld, is instigating conflict between gangsters by manipulating Yakuza families into wiping each other out for his own personal gain. He does this by spreading rumours and misinformation, manipulating and using others while he remains an inconspicuous background presence. Jijii’s trump card is Ichi, a mentally unstable young man who he has conditioned, through hypnosis, false memories and aggressive coaxing, into becoming a psychotic killer – when Jijii needs somebody killed, he sends Ichi to do the job.

Kakihara is a sadomasochistic Yakuza enforcer, notorious for the tortures he inflicts and so whacked out that even his superiors in the Yakuza are afraid of him. When his boss goes missing (slaughtered by Ichi on Jijii’s orders), Kakihara begins a tortuous rampage to find him, the search becoming a hunt to find Ichi. Jijii continues to orchestrate things from behind the scenes, ultimately pitting Kakihara and Ichi against each other.

It’s a pretty thin story all things considered, with more of a focus on the strange characters and their quirks. It’s used as a vehicle for all the violent, wacky weirdness. The movie absolutely never takes itself seriously, which is why it works – the weird sense of humour that inhabits every scene largely defused the more horrific stuff. The strange, violent, cruel scenes are buoyed by the exceptionally dark, silly humour. It remains compellingly watchable, even at times where it seems to be aimless or unpleasant.  

While having a fairly straightforward story, the details and way it’s told and structured are anything but. There are random flashbacks for several characters, delusions, false memories (some which might actually be true) and so many weird, unanswered scenes and plot threads that seem open to interpretation. The exact reasons as to why Jijii is bringing down the Yakuza is never explained or even hinted to, nor is his particular hatred for Kakihara. Most characters have mysterious, hard to decipher motivations A few exceptionally brief scenes or fast edits bring up so many questions about story aspects that have seemingly no importance. It all leads to an exceptionally strange ending that is very much open to interpretation. As are the themes, if there are any – the meaning and importance of violence are certainly looked at and indulged, with characters that need it, loathe it and love it making up the cast.

 

There are no good guys here. Everybody is horrible, violent and cruel and nobody has any redeeming qualities. Even the ones that don’t seem to be horrible reveal themselves to be terrible in some way. Characters are depraved, mentally deranged, psychotic or just plain weird and wacky, running the gamut from junkies, prostitutes, corrupt cops and various Yakuza flunkies.

Kakihara is easily one of my favourite film psychopaths, and is really the heart and demented soul of the film. Heavily scarred, with a Glasgow smile (held together by piercings) and an odd sense of style, Kakihara, put simply, is the most fun character of the lot. He’s also just about the most violent and psychotic character here, in a film full of them, but he’s always enjoying himself and isn’t bogged down in the real-world concerns of others. Kakihara, when it gets right down to it, is just looking for somebody to hurt and even kill him – that’s why he becomes downright eager to meet and fight Ichi, and why the finale gets so strange. He’s played excellently by Tadanobu Asano, a Japanese actor with great comedic and dramatic talents (he was excellent as Genghis Kahn in Mongol).

Ichi is a pitiful and pathetic character, a whimpering, nervous wreck, prone to being bullied and, when he snaps, bursts into tears as he flips out and kills people. Ichi goes into battle wearing a ridiculous BMX armour body suit, his weapons being shoes with retractable blades in the heels. He gets sexually aroused by violence, but is a whimpering mess for the most part, Jijii’s hypnotic suggestions severely messing him up to the point where even Jijii thinks he’s gone too far.

The rest of the fairly robust cast are quirky and strange. Jijii is oddly complex, mostly due to his motivations being unclear, with the finale giving a ridiculous reveal. Kaneko, an ex-cop-turned gangster thug just trying to provide for his son, is the closest there is to a sane, reasonable person (though even he violently snaps at one point). The corrupt police twins Jiro and Saburo are probably my favourite for weirdness – one wants to know if you can pull somebody’s arm off if you yank it really hard (and tests his theory) while the other, in probably the height of weirdness, tracks down a wanted thug by putting on a pair of dog ears, sniffing the crotch of the guy’s favourite prostitute and then following the scent.

The violence is ridiculous, with big gushes of blood, spilled organs and severed limbs being commonplace. The more outlandish violence is even played as jokes, with a lot of the gory tableaus being so ridiculous, over the top and unrealistic as to be funny. Other acts of violence however are brutal, far more realistic and uncomfortable, such as some of the violence directed to women. A rival gangster is tortured, suspended with hooks run through his skin, has needles jammed through his cheeks and is scoured with boiling water. This is almost the least horrific thing to happen in the film, with the more brutal, prolonged and uncomfortable tortures happening to women (nipples + boxcutter is horrible). While a lot of the violence is shown in gruesome detail, in true Miike fashion it’s the sound design that really brutalises; much like the ending of Audition, the sound effects make it even more horrific so that even when we don’t see what is happening we wince because we can hear it.

It’s a well-made film, especially by Miike’s standards (considering the man largely works with little for a budget), full of creativity and style. It’s energetic and outlandish, with a lot of sudden explosions of gory violence amidst strange, inventive scenarios. The music and editing are notable as well, the former being full of strange tunes and weird, almost experimental beats. It’s weird and bizarre, with too many WTF moments to count, and so strangely watchable. It’s one of Miike’s best, and most iconic, movies, and considering the man has directed over ninety films (and looks to have no sign of stopping) that’s a pretty big statement.