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Ichi the Killer

Original title: Koroshiya 1
  • 20012001
  • 2h 9m
IMDb RATING
7.0/10
56K
YOUR RATING
Tadanobu Asano in Ichi the Killer (2001)
Official Trailer
Play trailer1:27
1 Video
47 Photos
  • Action
  • Crime
  • Drama
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 o... Read allAs 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 achieving.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 achieving.
IMDb RATING
7.0/10
56K
YOUR RATING
  • Director
    • Takashi Miike
  • Writers
    • Sakichi Sato(screenplay)
    • Hideo Yamamoto(manga)
  • Stars
    • Tadanobu Asano
    • Nao Ômori
    • Shin'ya Tsukamoto
Top credits
  • Director
    • Takashi Miike
  • Writers
    • Sakichi Sato(screenplay)
    • Hideo Yamamoto(manga)
  • Stars
    • Tadanobu Asano
    • Nao Ômori
    • Shin'ya Tsukamoto
  • See production, box office & company info
    • 321User reviews
    • 109Critic reviews
    • 55Metascore
  • See more at IMDbPro
    • Awards
      • 6 wins & 4 nominations

    Videos1

    Ichi the Killer
    Trailer 1:27
    Ichi the Killer

    Photos47

    Ichi the Killer (2001)
    Nao Ômori in Ichi the Killer (2001)
    Nao Ômori in Ichi the Killer (2001)
    Nao Ômori in Ichi the Killer (2001)
    Ichi the Killer (2001)
    Nao Ômori in Ichi the Killer (2001)
    Kiyohiko Shibukawa in Ichi the Killer (2001)
    Paulyn Sun in Ichi the Killer (2001)
    SABU and Hiroshi Kobayashi in Ichi the Killer (2001)
    SABU in Ichi the Killer (2001)
    Nao Ômori in Ichi the Killer (2001)
    Nao Ômori in Ichi the Killer (2001)

    Top cast

    Edit
    Tadanobu Asano
    Tadanobu Asano
    • Kakiharaas Kakihara
    Nao Ômori
    Nao Ômori
    • Ichias Ichi
    Shin'ya Tsukamoto
    Shin'ya Tsukamoto
    • Jijiias Jijii
    Paulyn Sun
    Paulyn Sun
    • Karenas Karen
    • (as Alien Sun)
    Susumu Terajima
    Susumu Terajima
    • Suzukias Suzuki
    • (as Sabu)
    Shun Sugata
    Shun Sugata
    • Takayamaas Takayama
    Tôru Tezuka
    • Fujiwaraas Fujiwara
    Yoshiki Arizono
    • Nakazawaas Nakazawa
    Kiyohiko Shibukawa
    • Ryu Longas Ryu Long
    • (as Kee)
    Satoshi Niizuma
    • Inoueas Inoue
    Suzuki Matsuo
    • Jirôas Jirô…
    Jun Kunimura
    Jun Kunimura
    • Funakias Funaki
    SABU
    SABU
    • Kanekoas Kaneko
    • (as Hiroyuki Tanaka)
    Moro Morooka
    Moro Morooka
    • Coffee Shop Manageras Coffee Shop Manager
    Hôka Kinoshita
    • Sailor's Loveras Sailor's Lover
    Hiroshi Kobayashi
    • Takeshias Takeshi
    Mai Gotou
    • Sailoras Sailor
    • (as Mai Goto)
    Rio Aoki
    • Miyukias Miyuki
    • Director
      • Takashi Miike
    • Writers
      • Sakichi Sato(screenplay)
      • Hideo Yamamoto(manga)
    • All cast & crew
    • See more cast details at IMDbPro

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    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      For the sequence based on the part in the manga during chapters 13-16 of volume 2, where Susuki of the Funaki Gang is suspended from hooks and tortured, Susuki's actor Susumu Terajima required twelve hours of makeup and other preparation, and then spent twelve more hours shooting the scene.
    • Goofs
      SPOILER: Near the end of the movie after Ichi cuts Kaneko's throat and he is crawling towards his son Takeshi, you can for a brief moment see the tube with which the fake blood is pumped to his throat.
    • Quotes

      Kakihara: Damn... Nobody left to kill me.

    • Crazy credits
      End credits scroll up, down, left, right, forwards and backwards.
    • Alternate versions
      The French DVD is the full uncut version
    • Connections
      Featured in The Cult of Ichi (2007)

    User reviews321

    Review
    Top review
    Commitment to Sadism
    Takashi Miike is a committed sadist; he doesn't just play around with gruesome imagery, he immerses himself in it. Depictions of mutilation, decapitation, and just about every other outrage human beings can perpetrate on other people's bodies (and some they can't, at least not in a universe where the laws of physics as we know them are observed) have become common-place in movies and on television - half the TV shows in prime-time feature corpses in various states of dismemberment, decomposition and God knows what - but these endeavors only employ sadism as a hook, drawing in adult audiences with the promise of seeing something freakish and mortifying. These works are not involved with sadism the way Miike's are, do not take the same insane relish in inventing new tortures, new forms of mortification. Looked at in this light, Miike's Ichi the Killer represents some kind of high-water mark; it strives for a level of sadistic glee above what even most Japanese shockers do (and there are some shockers out there), and achieves what amounts to masterpiece status. Of course the word "masterpiece" is employed in strictly relative terms here; Ichi the Killer is not my idea of a masterpiece in the true sense, is not even my idea of what makes for good viewing, but one must acknowledge what Miike has created - nothing more or less than a classic in the field of shock cinema.

    It's inevitable that such a film would be based on a manga (that's a Japanese comic book for those of you not up on dork-culture (anyone reading this review who feels the need to fill me in on the history of manga, by way of explaining to me how they are not simply "comic books," need not bother, for I do not care)), which are apparently viewed as inspiration treasure-troves among those fascinated by nihilism, flesh-mortification, misogyny and the eternally mysterious, ritual-happy world of the Yakuza. Ichi the Killer gives us all of the above in spades. Its title character is a kind of demented anti-super-hero, a dopey, quivering, brainwashed wreck of a kid bent on ridding the world of all bullies, who dresses up in a nutty Darth-Vader-type outfit (sans mask) equipped with retractable blades that spring out when he performs his martial arts maneuvers, neatly slicing and dicing anyone who gets in the way (Ichi is rather indiscriminate about who he kills; we're led to believe that he has been programmed by his vengeful handler to murder only bad guys, but apparently the programming is a bit dodgy). A regular movie would show Ichi lopping people's heads off, severing the occasional jugular, but Miike is not content with such pedestrian amusements, and pushes things to such outrageous levels that our only sane reaction is to laugh. Miike fills whole rooms with dismembered bodies, spilled guts, blood, decapitated heads, achieving a level of carnage so over-the-top that it becomes surrealist comedy, Ichi a figure not of pity or menace but high sadistic hilarity, a murderous, brainwashed Jerry Lewis. As funny as Ichi is, however, he is not the funniest character in the movie; that distinction belongs to Kakihara, a Yakuza whose favorite pastimes are, in order, inflicting pain on other people, and inflicting pain on himself. Kakihara is a bod-mod freak; his face is covered with strategic scars, his body adorned with tattoos, but his most outrageous mods are the slashes in his cheeks, through which he exhales puffs of cigarette smoke, and which allow him to perform feats of mastication unheard of in human history. The acts of mutilation carried out by people on others in Ichi the Killer are scarcely more outrageous than those carried out by Kakihara upon himself; he feels compelled at one point to slice the end of his own tongue off (the ring through the end of it makes a nice handle to hold while doing the slicing; clever boy, that Kakihara).

    If this all sounds like too much - well, it is, and that's kind of the point. Miike, like many of his brethren in Asian film, is obsessed with shock-effects, with pushing outrage to a level heretofore unseen in cinema, and by virtue of films like Ichi the Killer has become the godfather of the form. Sure, there are moments of Ichi the Killer where Miike wants us to be touched - he shows Ichi being nice to a little kid, encouraging us to see Ichi as some poor fool with a kindly heart whose brain has been led astray by evil forces - but Miike is only really serious about visualizing torture, mutilation and extreme bod-mod activities as bloodily as possible. Ichi the Killer is a compendium of outrage, and it succeeds only as long as it's delivering on its promise of ever-more-brutal tortures, ever-more-insane forms of self-inflicted harm. It is, of course, a reprehensible movie filled with simulated acts of violence so sick as to make even battle-hardened extreme-cinema fans squirm in their seats, but it's done with so much humor, so much gleeful flair, that you can't help being taken in by it. Its attitude toward existence is purely nihilistic, but damned if it doesn't have fun exposing the essential cruelty of life, the animal nature of human beings. Miike is one sick puppy, but he seems aware of how sick he is, and doesn't try to dress up his outrages with a lot of pretty visual effects or Hollywood-style gloss. Miike is something of a minimalist when it comes to the camera; he tends just to point it and shoot, punctuating the action with stylistic flourishes rather than drowning his movies in style. It isn't even cinema itself that Miike seems primarily interested in, it's the chance to realize his twisted fantasies. He gets away with it because, unlike a lot of would-be sadists, he owns his fantasies, and seems to acknowledge his own twistedness.
    helpful•15
    4
    • aliasanythingyouwant
    • Nov 8, 2005

    FAQ2

    • What are the differences between the British BBFC 18 Version and the Uncensored Version?
    • What are the differences between the R-Rated and Unrated Version? What about the HongKong Version?

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • December 22, 2001 (Japan)
    • Country of origin
      • Japan
    • Languages
      • Japanese
      • Cantonese
      • English
    • Also known as
      • Koroshiya 1
    • Filming locations
      • Tokyo, Japan
    • Production companies
      • Omega Project
      • Toho Company
      • Omega Micott Inc.
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

    Edit
    • Budget
      • $1,400,000 (estimated)
    • Gross US & Canada
      • $20,285
    • Opening weekend US & Canada
      • $2,750
      • Nov 12, 2017
    • Gross worldwide
      • $80,631
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Technical specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      2 hours 9 minutes
    • Color
      • Color
    • Sound mix
      • Dolby SR
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.85 : 1

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