Ichi the Killer (R)
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One of seven movies directed in 2001 by Tokyo taboo-buster Takashi Miike, this gangster-movie gross-out--a duet for meat hook and boiling oil--is either the jumping-off or jumping-on point for the auteur's excessive visions. Imagine Love Story with the world's biggest sadist as Ryan O'Neal and the world's biggest masochist as Ali MacGraw, and that's just the subtext. The text involves dueling hit men who are perfectly matched opposites: Ichi (Nao Omori), a crybaby killer who weeps before pureeing foes with his bladed shoes, and Kakihara (Tadanobu Asano), a blond punk with slit cheeks who craves nothing more than punch-drunk love. An early scene establishes the three-dimensional cruelties of Miike's universe. While a thug beats and rapes his girlfriend, he's startled by a noise at the window: the sound of a furtive masturbator getting off on the show. What kind of person would watch such a thing--I mean, besides us? Ichi the killer, that's who--a character whose title card rises from a puddle of semen. Miike's most indefensible showstoppers (two words: nipple slicings) are exactly that. But would we really want to accept everything the director throws at us? If we did, we'd either be just like Ichi, jacking off to the world's horrors, or, even worse, we'd feel nothing. (Jim Ridley)
Review by Jim Ridley
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