OK I know this is based on the manga but I won't blame the manga. Because this movie, while it should faithfully and integrally match and live up to the literature it's based on, is a stand alone project. And it fell.
First off...this is not Ichi the Killer. People don't need to stop trying to be Ichi the Killer because after all you emulate classics. But they need to stop trying to be Ichi the Killer whilst also trying to outdo it. It won't work. It simply won't work. I have no idea what Ando Masanobu was doing in this film after his amazing opening scene as Vertebrae. I have no idea what the film in general was doing after the amazing opening scene. I was locked in, mesmerized, laughing, entertained, but in hindsight it was overdone while underdone. Like a frozen burger cooked on high heat: it looks good and ready to serve but then you realize everything on the inside is a mess.
Maybe they should have had a different director. The film was all over the place. And the "mystery" about who killed the yakuza boss in the beginning? I didn't even realize this was a mystery.
****SPOILER ALERT**** First of all the opening scene shows who killed the mobster, so why make it a mystery who set him up? It's hard to realize it was a setup in the first place. I mean, he's a yakuza boss. People will show up to kill you. So I guess this film was intentionally not a legit whodunnit murder mystery, but more so showing us who killed him already so the viewers laugh at the yakuza hypothesizing how he died. OK. But it leads to a slue of senseless violence so I didn't laugh. So the film fails either way.
It wasn't funny. I realize Japanese films either give a deep, serious gaze into the yakuza underworld, or do a parody of it. And so far only Takashi Miike can successfully do both. Not even Sion Sono can do yakuza like Miike! But OK, not everyone can be number 1 but they still must try, I get it. Ichi the Killer (also credit to its manga author/illustrator, and I have peeked through the manga and it looks damn good and I don't even read manga), successfully blends and juxtaposes (did I use that word right? Whatever) humor and gore; bleach blond Kakihara (not Ichi but Ichi's rival) was funny, cool, sexy, creepy, insane, adorable. Partly because it was played by Asano Tadanobu, and mostly because it was filmed by someone who knows what the hell they're doing. The director here didn't know how to put 1 and 1 together.
It was filmed retrospectively for no reason. Just to be filmed retrospectively? Because it didn't add to the mystery. Retrospect is supposed to show a blur in the memory and then clear things up with flashbacks. That didn't happen here! The girl they chose to play the yakuza's wife was no good and with her wig it took me a while to realize she's from Sono's Love Exposure 2008. Yea she wasn't good in that either.
Firstly the movie is about...lots of things. A NEET who wants to be an actor and addicted to pachinko gambling gets caught up in the underworld and has to work as a corpse mover (cool concept to be honest). And Vertebrae is on the run after massacring the Japanese yakuza. He is part of the Triad. Meanwhile the Japanese hunt for the killer. This somehow entangles the NEET, the corpse delivery driver and his righthand man, who for 2 minutes was f***ing hilarious: an old man who talks like a little kid and skips and sings when he gets food. However while it adds to the silliness it doesn't work as a parody since nothing connects. Whereas in Sono's movie "Play in Hell" they made the yakuza clumsy and silly, as well as absurdly violent. Thus it worked as a yakuza parody. This, did not.
Like there's a scene where the NEET is kidnapped by the yakuza rival of Vertebrae. He gets tortured by a yakuza in a diaper... None of it is done cool nor funny. While Ichi the Killer, somehow...it all was. And the revenge the NEET gets was anti-climactic. I imagine it was supposed to be a showdown where the crowd cheers for him. But it fell flat because the director took up SO much time with all the useless nonsense and could've saved screen time to add to the climax of this scene. He was the good guy suffering for no reason and his revenge wasn't played out well. He was sent there as a lamb, yet this is meant to be some life lesson for him. It might have worked but it was badly done.
And the action. It was garbage. CGI, slow-mo, sped up garbage. Sure Ando Masanobu can swing those iron nunchucks pretty well but they should've stuck to that. His moves become silly nonhuman stuff and it takes away from the badass he's meant to be. If this was a fantasy film someone should've told me. Or, if that was supposed to be funny someone should've told me. The gore also was ridiculous because psychologically those who like good gory films wanna see the victim either get revenge or have the bad guy be the victim. This film had neither.
OK so it wasn't funny. It wasn't cool. The torture was CGI or wasn't even shown, and wasn't justified nor avenged. The plot was all over the place. The actors sucked ass so bad. The costume design made the film look tacky and stupid. Much unlike Miike's "Like a Dragon." Which I'm gonna go watch again to wash this stupidness from my brain.
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