Ichi the Killer (2001)
Time: 2h 9mins
Director: Takashi Miike
Quick Summary: As sadomasochistic yakuza enforcer Kakihara searches for his missing boss he comes across Ichi, a repressed and psychotic killer who may be able to inflict levels of pain that Kakihara has only dreamed of achieving.
My friends are going to hate me on movie night
I actually don't know how to talk about this film as it feels like a fever dream that I didn't want to remember. It's honestly so bizarre and I'll be honest hard to follow. A lot of the time it bounced from one thing to another, from person to person and I got lost a lot of the time.
This is most definitely not for everyone. It's full of fairly regular over-the-top violence, torture and gore. Now I'm happy to see films like that, but this is intense sometimes especially with some of the scenes that are shown, as I got a little bit uneasy. Honestly, this is one of the most brutal and gory films I have seen, and I have seen a lot of films. It's graphic too. I think if the CGI wasn't so bad, this film might have been looked into because of how graphic it is. We get people hung mid-air by multiple meat hooks; body parts sliced off that made even me wince; needles poked through people; and a ton of blood being sprayed everywhere.
Even though I do like these things, it wasn't enough to keep me interested in this film in parts. I genuinely struggle to remember the actual plot of this. I was either grossed out or laughing. I'm not sure if it was intentional but a lot of the dialogue is pretty funny, especially the scenes with Kakihara who is just a whirlwind of calm chaotic nature. As someone who loves dry humour, his lines were brilliant to me most of the time.
It had some interesting cinematography and stylistic editing flairs to it, but because of how all over the place it is it's difficult to follow. This chooses to introduce us to multiple important characters at the start with Japanese names that were long and difficult to remember, this the audio for this film isn't amazing. So what would happen is we'd get scenes of long dialogue that were hard to follow as we jump from thing to thing, to then torture scene, back to dialogue, and then more violence. It was a little jarring I'll be honest.
For some reason, the guy shown above is in all the posters and advertisements for this film but he's not actually the main guy. What a horrible decision. Instead of this wacky, silly, fashion sense that I'm jealous of, with some interesting piercings, nutcase of a guy we get an incel who gets sexually aroused through watching people commit sexual violence and killing people. This guy would have been interesting if it wasn't for the fact he was such an incel who cried every five minutes and hid away from everyone. I find it difficult to remember the rest of the characters but they were all pretty strange and overly bizarre.
Personally, this comes across as a film that isn't watched for the story, but for the graphic nature of it and the strange characters. I mean the opening title is shown in a puddle of male cum. If that doesn't tell you more about how bizarre this is, I tried to warn you. I only recommend this if you have a strong stomach.
6/10
"Funaki: Kakihara! What the fuck do you think you are doing?
Kakihara: Just a little torture."
"[Kakihara tastes a bloodstained pile of money]
Kakihara: Yup. That's Boss Anjo's, all right."
Comments
Post a Comment