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Ichi the Killer (Unrated Edition) Director: Takashi Miike Number of Items: 1 Format: Color Audience Rating: Unrated Running Time: 129 minutes Studio: Media Blasters, Inc Product Group: DVD Release Date: 2003-11-18 Buy from Amazon

Customer Reviews: Total numer of reviews: 86 Average rating: 4.0 "Cinematic sideways!" I love Takashi Miike's directing and Ichi The Killer is destined to be a cult classic. It's a one of a kind Yakuza movie for sure. Ultra violent, bizarre, twisted, funny, just a few words to describe this movie. It has many interesting scenes and intriguing characters that will probably leave some scratching their heads in disbelief, if the heavy deviant sexual themes like sadism, masochism, rape and torture don't. Not for the sqeamish! If you like Japanese V-Cinema and Tokyo Shock, you should appreciate and enjoy this and all the unique and stylish work of Takashi Miike. The unrated version is the way to go here. I want to be in one of his movies! "Ichie The Silly" It's a good movie if you are looking for something for your child.I couldnt see "good" acting on any scene.This movie begins very good and after 30 minutes you start to pray god to make it stop.Takashi used anime style on " all " death scene and that makes the movie unreal.(ofcourse with bad acting)Whole movie contains unnecessary speeches and boring scenes that have not a subject.If you want to watch a real good gore movie dont waste your time with this(two stars for the torment scene, that's all) "Ichi and Scratchy" When I was 10 years old a friend of mine told me that "The Lord of the Flies" was such a great book because it was about a group of lost schoolboys who went crazy and started eating eachother. I was so horrified that I went straight to the library and read the book cover to cover in about three days (I found out by the end that my friend had lied to me, but it turned out to be a good book anyway). The point of the story is that I have always been fascinated by things that shock/horrify me. I call it the car crash syndrome; the inability to turn away or lose interest in something that is universally seen as shocking or grotesque. In order to sit through Ichi the Killer you need to have at least a little bit of that syndrome lurking inside you. Ichi the Killer is quite possibly the most disgusting film ever made (ever seen Braindead? say no more); a human embodiment of Itchy and Scratchy if you will. The film situates us in the underbelly of the Japanese underground, where the Yakuza rule the streets and every taboo imaginable roams free and unapologetically. Our protagonist, a Yakuza cappo known as Kakigahara, is a sadist who is sexually aroused by pain. He might actually be one of the greatest characters ever put on screen, with his bleach-blonde hair, flamboyant clothing and piercings that are so cringe-worthy that you have to see the film in order to truly get the picture (let's just say that his mouth has exceedingly more potential than most mouths do). His boss is (or was) a masochist who essentially fulfilled all of Kakigahara's sadistic needs until one day he dissapears. Kakigahara spends the rest of the movie searching for his boss with only one lead: Ichi. Ichi is another great character - he is a super human slicing and dicing machine whose power derives from his costume. He is bent on mutilating all that stand in his way; he leaves a disgusting trail of clues for our protagonist to track him down with, i.e. corpses cut in half, disemboweled, decapitated etc... not to mention the glob of semen that he leaves behind as well because of how aroused he gets whenver he inflicts pain. Takashi Miike directed this film so you cannot really expect anything less than shocking, but this really takes the cake even for Miike's standards. Underneath the blood and gore there is, actually, a very good story that deals with interesting themes (considering the circumstances) such as love, loss; there is even an interesting existential sensibility to this film. The film leaves little space for characters to develop but there are very interesting characters nonetheless. As a fan of Japanese film I really enjoyed this, although even as a car crash syndromee I found it really tough to sit through. If you have a sensitive gab reflex, or a weak stomach, I advise you to ween yourself onto this film by checking out some of Miike's less-gruesome works, such as Dead or Alive. I don't think there is anything in the history of film quite like Ichi the Killer, so I assure you that it is worth a look, but don't come crying to me if the man who cuts his own tongue out scares you. "Mis-advertised perhaps." I've owned a copy if 'Ichi the Killer' for quite some time now. When I first bought it I actually had to build upto it for a couple of days because I made the mistake of watching the trailer first. The trailer (which it seems is what led many of the reviewers here to see the film) does its best to point out that the film is extremely gory, violent, unrelenting and down-right extreme. The film is extreme but not as unrelenting as it would seem. It represents a hap-hazard study of base human emotions and how they may be triggered in anyone of us. Other reviewers mention 'unnecessary characters', specifically the cop's son. Watch the film again and you'll see that he is one of much more important supporting roles for the reasons mentioned above. I agree that many characters are simply not as fleshed-out as they should be and the film is over-long because of the confusion caused by this. On the other hand though the acting is generally of a high standard and the film has a surreal comedy aspect that is filled with energy. Many reviewers mention the violence of the film in a negative manner yet confess to watching the film because it is supposed to be violent. They seem to believe that pain/sadism and violence are two different things. Either grow a brain or cut off a finger and see if you scream, either way will make you a smarter person. "A pleasant suprise" I saw this movie by accident last year, in a theater in NYC. This movie is brilliant, with the wonderful acting of Tadanobu Asano taking the front and the Directing skill of Takashi Miike, you can expect this movie to be great. This movie shouldn't be classified as Yakuza, or Gore, because there are other movies that focus more on Yakuza and other movies that have more gore. This movie does get your fix though for Yakuzas, Gore and though you may think I'm crazy for saying it, humor. I feel Takashi Miike's style of incorperating humor into this movie was brilliant. There are certain parts of the movie that you may feel make no sense the first time watching it but if you really think hard about it and maybe watch it another time, you'll realize that it's not all that hard to follow. There's also the factor of Sun Alien's constant language swtiching, which still annoys me to this day, however Sun Alien is a Chinese actress if I remeber correctly, and most people in Japan understand english so that could be the reason. Only 1 thing to be warned about is that there is an "R" version of the movie which is horribly edited, and the dub track is horrible. Theres only 1 way to watch a Japanese movie, and thats with subtitles.