Review of Ichi the Killer (2001) by Luis Angel G — 12 May 2010

No other country produces depraved cinema in the same league as Japan. It takes a special kind of people to think in the ways that Japanese minds do, and to me it is a wonderful journey into the backtracks of the human wasteland. We all know that syndicated crime is ruthless and very real. All gangs operate on a strict code of honour, and this is most evident in the Yakuza of Japan than anywhere else in the world.

The excellent Tadanobu Asano plays Kakihara, searching for his boss's killer or abductor after he goes missing, giving his masochistic mind the leverage to use any methods necessary to extract information. We are also introduced to Ichi, a painfully shy young man with serious sexual and emotional issues, who is a genius killer when provoked. He is used by the rat like Jijii to meet his ends. Miike explores every perversity, from voyeurism, sadism, masochism in this house of horrors, filling it up with the most horrifyingly sadistic gore loving characters I have ever seen. There are moral questions here, and some social and political commentary, but it is lost in all the blood and gore. The movie works as a purely horror/ slasher masterpiece, turning the whole cheesy excuse of Hollywood slasher flicks on its head. This is what gore should be.