Thursday, January 01, 2004

Ichi the Killer (2003)

For about an hour, it's Takashi Miike's best work yet -- a mesmerizing, sick-fuck black comedy with a gore level that must be seen to be believed and a weird, highly sexualized undercurrent. It loses steam once Kakihara is expelled from his crime syndicate, though, and the lack of sympathetic characters make the second half of the film a bit hard to watch at times. (This might be the single most misanthropic film in cinema history -- there's no joy in this Mudville.) Still, the film's face-value acceptance of the old Jane's Addiction lyric "Sex is violence" make for queasily fascinating and thematically rich viewing.

Grade: B+

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