**SPOILER** For many months now, I have been avidly searching for a copy of what is said to be the most extreme film by Takashi Miike, the anarchic film genius that has quickly become my favorite director. This morning, the copy I ordered finally arrived, and, when the 128 minutes of beauteous lunacy had passed, I was left feeling extremely saddened and disturbed, contrary to my expectations based on all of the reviews I read, which tauted the film as cartoonish and filled with comic violence that elicited disgusted chuckles rather than startled tears. Watching this movie, I knew that the violence was not real (obviously) so I did not judge the film based on the realistic nature of its violence or its ability to shock me (if I want to be shocked I will venture out into my ghetto neighborhood and witness an actual killing). I looked at the film from an artistic/philosophical standpoint, and viewed the representations of violence as tools to communicate the director's ideas. Here I what I found.
(POSSIBLE SPOILERS) Ichi the killer was, for me, a treatise on the cyclical nature of violence, the pointlessness (and subsequent anarchic devastation) of vengeance, the inevitability and consequences of human egoism and the complete lack of morality and ethics in a completely deterministic world. The protagonist, Kakihara, is a man on a mission to find his one true "love," the only person able to satisfy him on a sexual/emotional/psychological (for Kakihara, one and the same)level. This kidnapped mob boss, he soon finds, has been murdered by the equivalent of a human robot, a very disturbed young man named Ichi who is manipulated and brainwashed by the director of what appears to be a halfway house for troubled youth (played with appropriate iciness by the director of the two "Tetsuo" films and "Tokyo Fist") into killing whoever the said director wants dead. Within this simple plot framework, ethics conflict with desires, the nature of abuse is explored, love and sexuality are perverted and questioned and everyone, it seems, fails in their simple quest to find happiness. Though there is no such thing as a happy ending for any involved (not even for Shinya Tsukamoto's subtle criminal mastermind), none are left as emotionally destroyed as Ichi, who's perspective of reality has been so intentionally skewed that this adolescent killing machine will never know peace. The majority of viewers will not look deeply enough into the film to appreciate its originality, audacity and style, and will probably write it off as just another "Sick" crime film, based on a comic book, made just to offend and entertain (how anyone can be purely entertained by this is beyond me). But to those with artistic minds who would not write the film off as just a live action manga (as so many have done to the brilliant "Tetsuo"), to those who can look beneath the surface of a piece of art, please, please, please, BUY THIS FILM!!! You will learn from it.
(POSSIBLE SPOILERS) Ichi the killer was, for me, a treatise on the cyclical nature of violence, the pointlessness (and subsequent anarchic devastation) of vengeance, the inevitability and consequences of human egoism and the complete lack of morality and ethics in a completely deterministic world. The protagonist, Kakihara, is a man on a mission to find his one true "love," the only person able to satisfy him on a sexual/emotional/psychological (for Kakihara, one and the same)level. This kidnapped mob boss, he soon finds, has been murdered by the equivalent of a human robot, a very disturbed young man named Ichi who is manipulated and brainwashed by the director of what appears to be a halfway house for troubled youth (played with appropriate iciness by the director of the two "Tetsuo" films and "Tokyo Fist") into killing whoever the said director wants dead. Within this simple plot framework, ethics conflict with desires, the nature of abuse is explored, love and sexuality are perverted and questioned and everyone, it seems, fails in their simple quest to find happiness. Though there is no such thing as a happy ending for any involved (not even for Shinya Tsukamoto's subtle criminal mastermind), none are left as emotionally destroyed as Ichi, who's perspective of reality has been so intentionally skewed that this adolescent killing machine will never know peace. The majority of viewers will not look deeply enough into the film to appreciate its originality, audacity and style, and will probably write it off as just another "Sick" crime film, based on a comic book, made just to offend and entertain (how anyone can be purely entertained by this is beyond me). But to those with artistic minds who would not write the film off as just a live action manga (as so many have done to the brilliant "Tetsuo"), to those who can look beneath the surface of a piece of art, please, please, please, BUY THIS FILM!!! You will learn from it.