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Ichi the Killer

Koroshiya 1

Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan

2001

129 Min
Color
1.85:1
Cantonese, English, Japanese
  • Currently 3.6/5 Stars.
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DIR Takashi Miike

PROD Akiko Funatsu, Dai Miyazaki

SCR Hideo Yamamoto, Sakichi Satô

DP Hideo Yamamoto

CAST Tadanobu Asano, Nao Omori, Shinya Tsukamoto, Paulyn Sun, Susumu Terajima, Shun Sugata, Toru Tezuka, Yoshiki Arizono

ED Yasushi Shimamura

Toronto, Stockholm (Twilight Zone)

Synopsis

Welcome to a world where violence is a virtue and depravity is a way of life. This is the underside of Shinjuku, and the home of Kakihara, a sadistic yakuza killer. He relentlessly tears apart the underworld searching for the man who killed his boss. The mastermind behind the plot is Jijii, an ex-cop bent on turning the gangsters of Japan against one another. His trump card is a physically powerful lunatic who is constantly on the verge of snapping. This madman is Ichi the Killer, and between him and Kakihara, the streets will run red with blood.

Director

Original

Takashi Miike

A contemporary of such noted film experimentalists as Tetsuo: The Iron Man [1989, maverick Japanese workhorse director Takashi Miike became one of the most talked about filmmakers in the international festival circuit. Despite the derailed manic energy of the aforementioned films, it was the stark relationship drama turned sadistic nightmare Audition that found the director receiving increasing international exposure. Audition succeeded in pulling the rug from under viewers as it turned the age-old image of the submissive Japanese female on its head with a shocking and nearly unbearable finale that had many horrified viewers shell-shocked. Born in Osaka, Japan, in 1960, Miike spent his childhood growing up in Osaka, where he eventually opted to study filmmaking at the Yokohama Academy of Visual Arts. Inspired more by Bruce Lee than Seijun Suzuki, Miike’s distinctive style came more as a result of not studying the traditional rules of filmmaking than a conscious attempt to break them… read more

Wall

Displaying 4 of 44 wall posts.

nikki

25May12

Films with unlikealbe characters can interesting to watch as character studies, but the people in this film are too are over top in their sadism, that there would no room for commentary on the human condition.

Picture of Zachary George Najarian-Najafi

Zachary George Najarian-Najafi

25May12

Hold onto your stomachs, kiddies. Takashi Miike pushes the limits of quite simply everything. I don’t think I’ve seen a more sadistic or graphic film. But it’s also sleek. Blood splatters against the crystalline backdrops of modern Japan. Absurdity mingles with the everyday. The bright candy colors and the super widescreen photography harken back to Seijun Suzuki’s surreal yakuza thrillers. But Miike takes it a step further. Body parts and organs and limbs are splashed all over the screen in wild fury. Colors pop and explode and the camera zooms in and out of strange places. By bringing a manga to life he’s created in cinematic form the real Japan. Maybe even the real modern world. After all, in a world where real life superheroes stalk the streets of Seattle and serial killings take on more bizarre and gruesome dimensions, Miike can’t be too far from reality, can he? Full of style and thrills, but it lacks a heart. That crucial missing component keeps the film from being a masterpiece. Even Miike’s fore-bearers like Suzuki, Woo, De Palma, and Lynch had hearts. This is the future of pop filmmaking, but what a nihilistic future it is. Idealism is dead.

  • nikki

    25May12

    idk, the lack of characters to care about made it boring for me. The characters are such horrible people, that I was waiting for them to all die. When ichi killed the only likeable character, I was rooting for that asylum denizen to die.

  • Picture of Zachary George Najarian-Najafi

    Zachary George Najarian-Najafi

    25May12

    I think I have to agree with you. I really liked the film as a whole, but it was just brutally nihilistic. I think it's most successful as a commentary on how people love to indulge in gore porn, but instead of being "enjoyable" Miike just pulls the rug from right under us. But the characters, man, they are horrible. Do people like this even exist?

Picture of meth_

meth_

23Apr12

This made me laugh more than it should.

Picture of witchnymph

witchnymph

27Mar12

I don't even know right now....Well, what I do know is it is wayyy too long for what it is.

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Fans

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Articles

Our roundup of essays and articles on this film.
W184

勝手にしやがれ #2: 10 Films Writing a Decade

By Stephen Sarrazin on January 18, 2010

If the nineties were the years which marked the return of Japanese cinema on the international film circuit, introducing and establishing

read article

Lists

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Reviews

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Giving pain is a serious business … Koroshiya 1 [Ichi the Killer]

By jaredmo​barak on January 23, 2010

Based on a Manga by Hideo Yamamoto, Takashi Miike’s Koroshiya 1 [Ichi the Killer] is just as brutally gory as people say. This was my first screening of a Miike work and I’m not quite so sure of how…  read review

Untitled

By morita on November 26, 2009

El cine de Takashi Miike no se parece a nada que haya visto antes, y probablemente sea algo que todavía no tiene nombre. Es así a tal punto que me cuesta mucho escribir algo sobre él (siempre quise…  read review

Untitled

By Justin Partrid​ge on April 21, 2009

You know that movie that you put on that all your friends like and enjoy, solely becuase it’s so crazy and makes fuck-all sense, but you watch it anyway and you and your friends put in on to kinda…  read review

Forum

Displaying 2 discussion topics.

Ichi The Killer

24 posts by 11 people over 2 years ago

manga adaptations

1 post by 1 person about 3 years ago