Ichi the Killer

R
Rated R for strong perverse violence/gore and sexuality, language and drug content
2h 9m

Release Date: Dec 22, 2001

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.

Releases

2017 Re-release | Nov 10, 2017

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Director & Top Cast

Takashi Miike
Director

Tadanobu Asano
Kakihara

Nao Ômori
Ichi

Shin’ya Tsukamoto
Jijii

Paulyn Sun
Karen

Susumu Terajima
Suzuki

Shun Sugata

Takayama

Tôru Tezuka

Fujiwara

Yoshiki Arizono

Nakazawa

Kiyohiko Shibukawa

Ryu Long

Satoshi Niizuma

Inoue

Suzuki Matsuo

Jirô

Jun Kunimura

Funaki

Sabu

Kaneko

Moro Morooka

Coffee Shop Manager

Hôka Kinoshita

Sailor's Lover

Hiroshi Kobayashi

Takeshi

Mai Gotô

Sailor

Technical Specifications

Sound Mix: Dolby SR

Aspect Ratio: 1.85 : 1

Other Details

Country of Origin: Japan

Language: Japanese,Cantonese,English

Summaries

Plot Summary

A man named Ichi stands on a balcony, masturbating while spying on a pimp raping and assaulting a prostitute. When the pimp notices him, he flees. A sadistic yakuza boss, Anjo, is murdered. A cleaning crew, led by Jijii, erases all traces of Anjo's death and attributes the murder to Ichi. Later, Kakihara, Anjo's sadomasochistic high-ranking enforcer, visits the pristine apartment and concludes that Anjo fled town with a prostitute and three million yen of the clan's money. Kakihara goes to an underground nightclub with other clan members. He tells Anjo's girlfriend, an English-speaking Chinese prostitute named Karen, that Anjo must still be alive, possibly kidnapped by a rival clan. Jijii feeds Kakihara rumors that Suzuki, a member of the rival Funaki clan, has abducted Anjo. Kakihara captures Suzuki and tortures him, but when Suzuki turns out to be innocent, Kakihara cuts off the end of his own tongue and offers it to Suzuki's boss as an apology. Kakihara and other clan members capture Kano, a drug-addicted member of the cleaning crew. Kano reveals that while he helped clean up the murder scene, it was Ichi who killed Anjo, and now Kakihara has become the next target. Later, Ichi returns to the pimp's balcony to watch him abuse Sailor, a prostitute Ichi regularly visits. Ichi eventually intervenes, killing the pimp and telling Sailor that he will now be the one to assault her. When Sailor tries to defend herself, Ichi instinctively kills her. At Suzuki's urging, Kakihara is expelled from the yakuza, but the entire Anjo clan defects alongside him. Suzuki then offers Jijii a million yen to eliminate Kakihara. It is revealed that Jijii is secretly orchestrating events to pit the yakuza clans against each other, with Ichi's help. Normally timid and cowardly, Ichi becomes homicidal and sexually excited when angry. Jijii manipulates Ichi by implanting several false memories - a high school rape in particular - and uses Ichi as his assassin. Ichi fends off three bullies who are attacking a boy named Takeshi, the son of Kaneko, one of Kakihara's henchmen. Jijii provokes Ichi into entering an apartment where several members of the former Anjo clan are, and Ichi slaughters them all. Afterward, Ichi sees Takeshi, who thanks him for earlier helping him. Kaneko finds a brothel owner attacking Ichi in an alley and rescues him, recalling his own rescue by a member of the Anjo clan years ago. Kakihara enlists the help of corrupt twin detectives, Jiro and Saburo, to track down Myu-Myu, a prostitute connected to Ryu Long, a member of Jijii's gang. When Jiro fails to extract information from her through torture, Saburo finds Long. Although Long escapes the brothers, Kakihara captures him so the twins can torture him for leads to Jijii. Meanwhile, Jijii has Karen seduce Ichi by pretending to be the woman from his fabricated memory of the rape. When Ichi becomes confused by Karen's claims that she wanted him to rape and hurt her, he kills her. Jijii tells Kakihara that Ichi is coming to kill him, but one of Kakihara's men, Takayama, spots Jijii. After a chase, Jijii, surprisingly strong and muscular, disarms and kills Takayama. Ichi then arrives at Kakihara's base, where he kills Jiro and Saburo. Kaneko, Kakihara, and Ichi chase each other to a rooftop. Due to Jijii's psychological manipulation, Ichi believes that Kaneko is his brother and confronts him. Kaneko shoots Ichi in the leg, and Ichi slits Kaneko's throat in front of Takeshi. Takeshi attacks Ichi as he undergoes a mental breakdown. Disturbed by Ichi's behavior and screams, Kakihara inserts skewers into his ears. He suddenly sees Ichi decapitate Takeshi. Ichi then charges at Kakihara, driving a bladed boot into his forehead. Kakihara falls from the roof to his death. However, when Jijii finds him, Kakihara has no wound in his head; he had hallucinated both Takeshi's death and Ichi's attack. Years later, Jijii's body is found hanging from a tree in a park. A young man resembling an older Takeshi leaves the park with a group of schoolchildren.

Storyline

When a Yakuza boss named Anjo disappears with 300 million yen, his chief henchman, a sadomasochistic man named Kakihara, and the rest of his mob goons go looking for him. After capturing and torturing a rival Yakuza member looking for answers, they soon realize they have the wrong man and begin looking for the man named Jijii who tipped them off in the first place. Soon enough Kakihara and his men encounter Ichi, a psychotic, sexually-repressed young man with amazing martial arts abilities and blades that come out of his shoes. One by one Ichi takes out members of the Yakuza and all the while Kakihara intensifies his pursuit of Ichi and Ichi's controller Jijii. What will happen as the final showdown happens between the tortured and ultra-violent Ichi and the pain-craving Kakihara? — Joseph Yakuza boss Anjo disappears with three hundred million yen. His loyal gang members, lead by the masochist Kakihara, start a search, but their aggressive and gory methods worry the other yakuza gangs. Kakiharas most frightening counterpart is the mysterious Ichi, a psychopathic killer with a dark childhood secret, who is controlled by a retired cop. — Moritz Muehlenhoff