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"There is an art, it says, or rather a knack to flying. The knack lies in
learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Pick a nice day, it
suggests, and try it. The first part is easy. All it requires is simply the
ability to throw yourself forward with all your weight, and the willingness
not to mind that it's going to hurt. That is, it's going to hurt if you fail
to miss the ground."
--The HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Last night I had the masochists pleasure of sitting through Ichi the
Killer for the 5th time. I own a bootleg uncut copy and now I leave
you with this sometimes pleasant review of a movie about
Masochism, Sadism and just pure old pain.
The story to Takashi Miike's (Dead Or Alive) "Ichi the Killer"
revolves around two main characters. One, Ichi the Killer (no pun
intended) and two, Kakihara. Ichi is a sociopathic hitman who
breaks down in tears when killing his target. Not only that, but he
also has to be convinced that his targets are directly related to the
bullying he had to go through in high school. Kakihara on the other
hand, is the Yakuza leader's right hand man, that is, until his boss
goes missing. After much investigation and torturing hapless
members of opposing gangs, Kakihara learns of this Ichi character
and being the masochist that he is, starts to dream about the
ultimate fight with Ichi. The rest of the story I will leave for you to
find out.
As far as gore goes, this movie almost matches Dead Alive in
liters of blood and surpasses many milestones in the style in which
the gore is delivered. For example, theres a scene where these
thugs are pestering our lovely protagonist, Kakihara, threatening to
cut out his tongue, etc. Deciding that he'd make it easier for them,
he decides to just do it himself. He then proceeds to cut out his
tongue on camera and gives the leader the chunk of his tongue.
Another perfect example is when Ichi is being made fun of by a
pimp because he's laughing. Ichi, being the lunatic that he is,
decides to slice him from top to bottom with little concealed blades
in the heel of his shoe.
The story itself is based on a manga that goes by the same
name so obviously, the story has an extremely cartoonish style,
while still keeping a dark enough setting to keep the film serious
enough to keep a viewers mind tuned in.
For those of you who really wish to see this movie, your best
bet at the moment is to get the bootleg copy off ebay, the uncut
one with subtitles. If you can hold on for just a couple of months,
on January 21st, a Dutch version is coming. It's supposed to be a 2
DVD package with a bunch of extras, the only catch is that its in
PAL, so you gotta watch it on your PC or have one of those nifty
DVD players that has built in PAL/NTSC conversion.
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