Review of Ichi the Killer (2001) by Hannah M — 07 Sep 2008

There was a class at my school in S&M study, and I really wanted to attend, mostly because I think S&M; sadism enjoying pain inflicted on others and masochism, enjoying pain inflicted on yourself, in a structuralist submission/domination view not just whips/leather (this is a ridiculous sentence I know...), are more relevant to the power dichotmes of our daily lives than we give credit to, and the entire reason that horror films as a genre work on the level they do.

Ichi The Killer, kinda jump started this interest. It's a dreanged Yakuza story about the interchangability of pain and pleasure. Kakihari on a quest to find his lost boss and mentor(whom he was also involved in an S&M relationship with and who is the only one who can "hurt" him just right), Kakihari as evidenced by his body mods, seen on the cover here, is interested in pain as pleasure.

While the eponymous Ichi, is a sniveling, almost autistic boy, who becomes an unstoppable killing machine (for reasons never explained), when agitated. Accept after his Incredible Hulk fits he ends up crying and curled up in a ball in the corner. Kakihari imagines Ichi as the ultimate sadist, the answer to the "pain" he's been waiting for, while in reality Ichi himself is just a horribly manipulated mental case who was (Spoiler), given false memories of witnessing a rape to instill in him a sense of justice. Which instead of turning him into a super-hero, has made him a mentally unstable child-man, unable to disentangle sex from violence aroused and confused by rape, death, and human interaction in general.

Yakuza stories are just gangster stories in Japan, so imagine American Gangster, and it's intended audience, now seeing a similar film with the characters and ideas I just described, and you get an idea of how radical "Ichi The Killer", really is. Ichi examines the S&M relationship, and modern masculenity picking up on the sexuality "Fight Club" ignored.

It's also filled with enough gore, voilence, and WTF moments, to overshadow any of the finer points the movie tries to make, which is it's ultimate weakness, and the reason there will always be a "cult" before the "classic" when it comes to Takashi Miike. Even the worst Miike movie Iver seen is more interesting than half a dozen other movies I could name off hand, and this is one of the strangest takes on the gangster revenge loyalty tale your ever likely to see. Try to find the "unrated" version if you can....and yeah this movie is crazy and junk.