"Ichi the Killer" (2001)

(Originally released as Koroshiya 1)

Starring: Tadanobu Asano, Nao Omori, Shinya Tsukamoto, Alien Sun, Sabu, Shun Sagata

First, the lowdown: A sadistic Yakuza tracks down his boss’s socially awkward assassin.

Whoah. I’m gonna start out by saying that this movie is not for the faint of heart. After being exposed to blood-soaked Italian giallo flicks and over-the-top Chinese viscera, I’ve become more than a little numbed to gore in movies. Ichi made me squirm during more than a few places. I’m impressed.

There are layers to the messed-uppedness in this film; it’s like peeling an artichoke only to find a live grenade in the center that explodes in your face. That being said, it’s hard to come up with a synopsis to this movie, but I’m going to try anyway.

We open with a trio of gang outcasts: Jijii, Saburo, and Ryu. They patiently wait in a van for their assassin, Ichi, to finish with his job: the execution of gang leader Anjo. Ichi confirms that his mission is over by giving Jijii a tearful phone call on his cellphone, and the three of them go up to the apartment to clean up. The apartment needs cleaning up because Ichi’s methods, while effective, leave quite the mess. (One of the men slips on a pile of entrails.)

The next day, Anjo’s gang tries to evaluate what’s happened. Jijii’s group cleaned the apartment so thoroughly that it doesn’t look like anyone died. The prevailing opinion given by Anjo’s superiors in the syndicate is that Anjo took the 300 million yen (about $25,000) and ran off. Karen, Anjo’s mistress (whose conversation flows between Japanese, Chinese, and English), mirrors this opinion. Kakihara, Anjo’s second in command, doesn’t think so and suspects that someone has either kidnapped or killed Anjo.

Jijii approaches the Anjo gang with a tip about the whereabouts of their boss. Jijii says that Suzuki, who works for a rival gang under the same syndicate, has been badmouthing Kakihara and holds a grudge against him for undermining a pornographic video operation. Kakihara has Suzuki kidnapped and tortured (including dumping hot tempura oil on him), only to be interrupted by Suzuki’s boss, Funaki. It turns out that Suzuki really DIDN’T know anything, and as a result the Anjo gang is thrown out of the syndicate. Now thoroughly pissed, Kakihara is determined to find out where both Jijii and the man who killed his boss is.

Takashi Miike has long established himself as a shock-film auteur. The interesting thing about how he uses gore is that it’s hard to label it as exploitive. There’s a lot of mutilation in this film, but the characters all take it in stride. There are very few reactions of disgust, most of Kakihara’s cohorts look on with professional detachment as he pokes and prods into yet another victim.

Line of the movie: “There’s no love in your violence.”

Five stars. All employees must wash hands before returning to work.