Hooptober XII: 2/32

Hooptober rolls on with one I’ve been nervously excited to tackle for a while now. My word, Takashi Miike. Something about his films feels so simultaneously tasteful and repulsive, I’m not sure anyone else can pull off that aesthetic so wonderfully. At times, Ichi the Killer feels like the last twenty minutes of Audition stretched across a two hour runtime, and at others like a chaotically humorous Manga come to life, resulting in a film that stands on its own when it comes to its bonkers tone. It’s been quite a while since I actively fought to keep looking at the screen in regard to movie gore, and while I’d been forewarned about Ichi the Killer’s shocking depictions of violence, them invoking a head-to-toe physical reaction was a nice little surprise. And it’s not just shock value art either. 

Narratively, there’s actually a tender heart beating somewhere underneath its rampant violence. As a character, Ichi is a mild mannered, almost sympathetic figure in the middle of some of the most vile psychopaths ever put to film, yet in the same breath, he’s worse than all of them. On the other side of the coin, Kakihara’s over-the-top violence-first approach, stands in stark opposition, creating the perfect foils for each other. 

Much like the only other Miike film I’ve seen, Audition, things skew seamlessly into surrealism, especially near its conclusion through the use of hypnosis. Jijii craftily pulls the strings of his Yakuza underworld in a manner I can only liken to a psychotic head trip. Played against gratuitously realistic violence, and a surprising layer of humor, we get an absurdly chaotic Yakuza body-horror flick that has me drooling all over its style. 
🫆🚨🩸🪡🔪🥾🩸🇯🇵