Ichi the Killer Review

If you’re into the hardcore Asian films, then this might be for you.

Ichi, an emotional wreck of a person, seeks revenge upon anyone who hurt him in the past. He faces up against a sadistic man who loves to torture, Kakihara. It's an all out battle to find Ichi and Kakihara won't stop until he takes on Ichi one on one.

Now, I have seen my share of Japanese action/horror films and I gotta say that I was somewhat confused by this at first. These kind of films are either way too slow or extremely too fast in which case this film was. You don't really get a sense of why Ichi (Nao Omori) is doing what he is doing until half way into the movie. He has a sexual problem from "thinking" of his bad sexual experience in the past and likes to masturbate when women get beat around. Also, when he becomes angry, he starts to cry and uses his slice and dice heal boots to really cut up his victims.

I found Kakihara, Tadanobu Asano, to be my kind of guy. He loved pain just as much as dishing it out. He's methods of torture were unique and painful to watch. His self-mutilation to his mouth is outstanding, creepy, but outstandingly cool. The clothespins were a nice touch too.

The gore was too much CGI'ed for my taste. In fact, too much of the really cool stuff was CGI'ed. I don't mind CGI; I just rather see a little of instead of tons of it because it really makes the film look like crap. Fortunately, it didn't do that much harm because this movie was just great in the story itself. The director really knew how he wanted the scenes to be shot in a way that we feel towards each character.