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Ichi the Killer (Unrated Edition)Rating:
Release Date: 18 November, 2003 Retail Price: $24.95 OUR Price: $11.99 You SAVE: $12.96! Cast: |
Ichi the Killer (Unrated Edition) Reviews
Miike is a brilliant, complex filmmaker...
It has always annoyed me that when discussions about Takashi Miike's film occur, everyone talks about the gore and violence and, usually, miss the point of it. Miike is a great filmmaker, and there is intelligence, depth, and sadness at the heart of quite a lot of his films. I have never been one for films which just show gore (like recent "homages" to Japanese horror like Hostel). I've always preferred my films to have some intelligence factor. Miike's films do just this. This is one of his best films. The performances are actually very good. The young man who plays Ichi gives a very sad performance. I found it amusing that at the Toronto Film Festival, they handed out barf bags. I didn't need one, here. A visceral, stunning film.
RE: pellington's review
Pellington wrote, "Also, near the end when a certain character takes one of Ichi's foot blades in his forehead, the wound disappears when he hits the ground..." He writes that this is an oversight on the part of the director.
Just a clarification. Kakihara's wound from the foot blade not appearing is intentional, not an oversight. Kakihara only imagined the last fight with Ichi.
Kakihara, the film's ultimate sadomasochist, had worked up the idea of Ichi being the ultimate sadist. When he finally meets Ichi, he is dissapointed to find that the real Ichi is a cowering wimp. He had hoped to be killed by a true killer, like the Ichi in his mind, not the crying Ichi before him. So as Ichi lies crying on the ground, Kakihara fantasizes that Ichi gets up from the ground and fights him like a the killer he imagined. But the last fight is just in his head. And the wound that Ichi inflicts is not real. That's why when Kakihara appears dead on the ground the scar is missing. He died by committing suicide, a proper attending for the world's biggest sado-masochist.
The film is made up of these psychological points of intersection: the masochist meeting the sado-masochist and they occur throughout the movie. Sometimes the points are subtle (like the scar on the forehead). Sometimes they are not (Miss Tachibana getting sliced up by Ichi). But the film is ultimately about the search for pain and the disspointment that occurs when we find it.
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