ichi the killer - Ichi the Killer (2001) (also Koroshiya Ichi) is a highly controversial film directed by Takashi Miike and adapted from a manga by Hideo Yamamoto. The film stars Tadanobu Asano as Kakihara, a sadomasochist yakuza enforcer who enjoys giving and receiving pain in about equal measures. To reinforce this, he is shown as having his mouth widened on both sides by several inches, with his cheeks held together with piercings. Kakihara's boss Anjo vanishes one night after he is murdered in a particularly gruesome fashion. A mysterious group arrives and cleans up all evidence of the murder, and takes the three million yen (roughly $25 850 US) Anjo had in his room. Many of Kakihara's compatriots, including Anjo's English and Chinese-speaking girlfriend Karen (Alien Sun), suspect that Anjo simply took the money and ran, but Kakihara is convinced the man is alive. His investigation leads him to brutally torture a member of a rival clan, Suzuki (Susumu Terajima) by suspending him from a ceiling by putting metal hooks through the man's back, shoving stilettos through his body, and throwing boiling grease (from a meal of tempura) on him. (In an example of the film's extremely black humor, when asked what he is doing, Kakihara responds nonchalantly, 'Just a little torture, nothing special.') The man turns out to be innocent. To make restitution, Kakihara slices off part of his tongue and offers it to Suzuki's boss (Jun Kunimura). However, the man who tipped Kakihara off to Suzuki and may have more real information, a disheveled old man nicknamed Jijii (Shinya Tsukamoto), is nowhere to be found. Jijii is, as it turns out, secretly orchestrating events. Under his wing is a young man, Ichi (Nao Omori), a confused and apparently psychotic individual who is normally unassuming and cowardly, but becomes homicidal when enraged (and who has crying fits when committing his murders). Ichi outfits himself in a rubber suit with shoes that have razors concealed in the heels, and after spying on a pimp brutalizing a prostitute kills first the pimp, then the girl. Jijii has so manipulated Ichi as to confuse sexual arousal with homicidal lust in him, and accomplished this by creating a false memory in him of witnessing a rape in high school -- which he felt ashamed for wanting to participate in rather than stop. Kakihara is eventually thrown out of the syndicate for his transgressions, but not before catching word of Ichi. He becomes fascinated with this 'total sadist,' since perhaps through him he can finally find the ultimate pain he has been seeking -- one which neither his girlfriend nor his boss could give him. In a related plot development, Jijii attempts to get better control over Ichi by having Karen seduce him, but the plan backfires horribly and Karen is slaughtered. Kakihara, along with two corrupt police-detective twin brothers, finds a prostitute connected with Jijii's gang. In one of the film's more disturbing scenes, they torture her for information (primarily by cutting her nipples off). They find one of Jijii's henchmen and torture him to find out where Ichi is. However, at this point Ichi shows up at Kakihara's compound. Ichi and Kakihara eventually confront each other on a rooftop. The film then ostensibly departs from literal reality and gives us a showdown that appears to take place in the minds of one or the other of the main characters, but it remains deliberately obscure which.