Synopsis
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.
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Cast
- Tadanobu AsanoKakihara
- Nao OmoriIchi
- Shinya TsukamotoJijii
- SABUKaneko
- Paulyn SunKaren
- Susumu TerajimaSuzuki
- Shun SugataTakayama
- Toru TezukaFujiwara
- Yoshiki ArizonoNakazawa
- Kiyohiko ShibukawaRyu Long
Recommendations
- 88
Slant Magazine
Unhinged even for Takashi Miike, Ichi the Killer suggests a bloody and ejaculate-stained Rorschach inkblot, reveling in ultraviolence that can be interpreted to flatter any adventurous audience's sensibilities. - 75
New York Post
One of Miike's most violent and sadistic movies, filled with squirting blood, throat-slashing, limb-hacking and other forms of mutilation too gruesome to describe here. - 70
Village Voice
Underneath the spillage and flow of this gonzo activity, Miike layers a blood-stained commentary on a toxic world in which men offer protection to men but really end up dooming them to exist within a spasmodic, shambolic, and hypermasculine sphere of violence. - 60
Film Threat
Takashi knows how to make a great, sleazy Yakuza film, but what I’m missing here is that sense of something brand new. - 60
TV Guide Magazine
Takashi Miike's frenetic comic yakuza thriller embodies the best and worst this notorious Japanese genre auteur has to offer: It's endlessly inventive, consistently intelligent and sickeningly savage. - 50
The New York Times
The direction occasionally rises to the level of marginal competence, but for most of the film it is hard to tell who is chasing who or why. - 50
Variety
Completely over-the-top yakuza actioner -- featuring nonstop mayhem, gore, torture and S&M -- duly reflects its comic book origins in both style and barely coherent narrative frenzy. - 50
Chicago Tribune
Any serious message has been sacrificed on the altar of excess, making us realize why the stylish story probably worked better as a graphic comic book than as a film.
