Review of Ichi the Killer (2001) by Christine A — 26 Mar 2009

The gore in this film was phenomenal and disturbing. If that's what you're watching it for (and it probably is), you won't be disappointed. There were violent parts of this film that made me cringe, and I was yawning during Cannibal Holocaust.

Beyond the gore, however, the film is a bit too long and scattershot. At a little over two hours it drags, which is absurd for a film such as this where there isn't that much story, most secondary characters are hardly fleshed out at all and many things are left unexplained (and not in a good mystery way but just in a "more info was needed to understand this character's motivation" way).

Most of the film revolves around just 3 characters: Ichi the Killer who is working his way up to assassinating Yakuza gang boss Kakihara (the scarred guy on the cover) and one of Kakihara's hired guns, Kaneko, who tries to raise his young son separately from living his life of crime.

Other characters come and go but just who they are in the scheme of things is left fairly vague and characters who were hardly touched on early in the film reappear most of the way in suddenly vitally important, and just why this is so is also vague.

I'm pretty sure I was paying close attention yet I still don't really understand why the guy Kakihara's gang abducts and tortures 2/3 of the way through was so important. This film would have been much better overall with just a bit of fleshing out characters' relationships to one another and, as there are lots of secondary characters who come and go, maybe a little more name dropping would have been nice as my "who's who" got mixed up.