ICHI THE KILLER / 殺し屋１ (2001)
Directed by Takashi Miike
129 minutes
Few films have detonated on the festival circuit quite like Takashi Miike's hardcore adaptation of Hideo Yamamoto's manga. A quarter-century on, it has lost none of its power to shock. In Tokyo's yakuza netherworld, the masochistic enforcer Kakihara finds his path crossing that of Ichi, a crybaby psycho killer engineered for violence by forces he barely grasps. Split-cheeked, peroxide-blond, and addicted to pain, Kakihara searches for the missing boss he loved and the sadist who can finally hurt him badly enough. His quarry turns out to be Ichi, a weeping wreck of a man conditioned into a human weapon by a manipulator with his own designs. Miike stages the carnage as nightmare slapstick and tender horror by turns, and Asano gives one of the great performances of his career. A landmark of Japanese extreme cinema, and one of NYAFF's foundational obsessions.