K, I just reviewed the prequel in the previous post...
It's not a good idea to watch the prequel though before this movie, as the prequel doesn't even compare in terms of creative quality to this movie.
Ichi The Killer is based on a Japanese comic of the same name by Hideo Yamaoto. There is also an anime which I will slate with pleasure in the next post. If you want a genre for this film, I'd say it was Yakuza, thriller-horror.
Director Takashi Miike has directed a hell of alot of Yakuza (Japanese mafia films), and I personally don't think anyone has documented the Yakuza in terms of fictional film better than Miike (I've almost seen all Miike's Yakuza films now).
The boss of a Yakuza gang (who's main characteristic is his beating of people btw;) is assasinated by a Killer, called Ichi (Ichi tranlating as the number '1' in Japanese). The 'manager' of Ichi, Jiji, steps in when the now-supposedly assasinated/disapeared/vanished yakuza boss' main man, sadist Kakihara starts looking for his boss' killer, and feeds him a little white lie that it may have been a rival gang. I won't rant too much about this film, as it's best to discover a good film for yourself based on the fact you've heard it's worth watching, without hearing too much about it.
Ichi wears a this black body suits that has cutting blades that come out of the bottom of his boots. Was a little dissapointing, cuz I thought he could have had them in the gloves also. The graphic violence is probably the best I've seen in any Japanese live action movie, and I don't think I've seen a low-budget movie where the special FX haven't looked ultra-crappy. There's this one scene where a character (the actor being a skinny 40 something year old man) strips off and reveals himself as a muscley-hulk, and the actor's face is super imposed over the body builder's face- thing is, I would never have guessed they did this were it not for the behind the scenes DVD feature. The final fight could have been better, and there was a few other things I thought could have been done with the material, but I'm not a director/screen writer, and I don't know the pressures these people are under when making it.
My overall rating 7.5/10.
FAVE QUOTES!: 'Now he's dead I'll beat you instead.'
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