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Japanese Horror

Ichi the Killer

2h 9m

Directed by Takashi Miike • 2001 • Japan
Starring Tadanobu Asano, Nao Omori, Shinya Tsukamoto

Visceral, bloody, and often hilarious, Takashi Miike’s gonzo gore opera (an adaptation of the manga by Hideo Yamamoto) is one of the most influential and notorious genre films of the twenty-first century. While searching for his boss’s killer, sadomasochistic yakuza enforcer Kakihara (Tadanobu Asano) comes into the orbit of a demented costumed assassin known as Ichi (Nao Omori), a violent, sexually repressed young man who has the ability to deliver the kind of orgasmic agony that the pain-obsessed gangster craves.

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