Ichi the Killer Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.5

Ichi the Killer Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 13, 2018

What can be said about Ichi the Killer that hasn’t already been said? That it’s depraved? Check. Possibly disgusting? Check. Any number of other potentially pejorative adjectives could be lobbed at Takashi Miike’s controversial effort, including repulsive, grotesque, disturbing, degrading, et al. And yet the film maintains a peculiarly high profile in the eyes of many, despite imagery that virtually assaults the viewer, and a stylized approach toward ultra violence that may seriously upset more sensitive audience members. That very style would seem to harken back to another film made at the nexus of media sensation and rampant, over the top violence, Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers. Like Stone, Miike seems to be making the point that the very depiction of violence is part of what fuels modern media. If Stone’s target (so to speak) was the 24 hour news cycle, perhaps the case could be made that Miike was focusing on violence in film itself and how that affects the audience. It’s a deliberately provocative thesis, one made even more provocative by Miike’s predilection toward offering some of the most savage imagery imaginable. As a result, Ichi the Killer is most decidedly not for everyone. Those who do like the film, however, have long had qualms about its 2001 Blu-ray release by Tokyo Shock, though, as I’ll discuss in the video section of this review below, perhaps some of that disappointment is worthy of a reassessment. Well Go USA is bringing the film out with a new 4K restoration supervised by Emperor Films. Unfortunately, while this release offers better technical merits than the Tokyo Shock release, it omits almost all of the supplements that fans enjoyed on that release, even as they complained about that disc’s technical merits.

As I tend to do with re-releases of titles that have seen the Blu-ray light of day previously, I'm assuming most people coming to this review are more interested in a comparison of video and audio quality (as well as a comparison of supplemental features) than they are in another plot summary. For those unacquainted with the story of Ichi the Killer, I refer you to my colleague Dustin Somner's Ichi the Killer Blu-ray review of the Tokyo Shock version.

Ichi the Killer Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Ichi the Killer is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Well Go USA with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. This is the first Well Go USA release in my recollection that begins with a text card detailing aspects of the transfer and/or restoration. That text card reads:

Ichi the Killer is a 2001 Japanese crime horror film. Adapted from the manga series of the same name and directed for the screen by Takashi Miike, it was shot originally on 16mm, telecined in HD video for post production, before filmed out on 35mm inter-negative for the making of release prints.

A full digital restoration of the director's cut of Ichi the Killer was undertaken by Emperor Motion Pictures in 2017. A new transfer was created in 4K resolution from a 35mm inter-negative at L'Imagine Ritrovata in Bologna, Italy. It was then digitally restored and colour graded in 4K resolution.

With a running time of 128 minutes, this restored version of Ichi the Killer, as approved by Takashi Miike, is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1.

Before I get into my reaction to this new transfer, I'd like to take just a moment to talk about reviewing in particular and changes in perception that both reviewers and home theater aficionados in general have experienced over the years, within the context of releases of Ichi the Killer. While Blu-rays were being released by late 2006, the Tokyo Shock's release date of Ichi the Killer in 2010 was still at least relatively early in the format, and many people (including reviewers) were still growing accustomed to things like different film formats (i.e., 16mm, 35mm, the "Supers", etc.) as well as what was back then the still developing technology of digital capture (I am frankly still shocked to see many high profile review sites offering assessments of digitally captured films where the reviewers talk about film grain, even when there's obviously been no digital grain applied in post). I'm sure many longtime readers of Blu-ray.com and other home theater related sites can remember controversies that erupted around various "early" reactions to releases like the 2008 Patton, where some folks loved the "video" like look of things, and others decried a release that simply didn't look like film. I myself got brickbats for not trashing releases like The Big Lebowski to the degree some thought it deserved due to what I described in that review as "Universal's typical DNR".

All of this is to say, while Dustin scored the Tokyo Shock release at 1.0, I personally might have bumped that at least a bit since I'm firmly convinced that at least some of what some folks were bothered by in the first release were source related, as evidenced by the production flow outlined in Well Go USA's statement above. While we are treated to the perhaps crazy transition from 16mm to HD video to 35mm in that statement, there's no mention of even further image manipulation that Miike and his team obviously did in post, leading to a hugely variant viewing experience in virtually all of the areas we typically try to assess in these reviews, like grain structure, clarity, sharpness and palette reproduction.

All of that is to say that there is simply no arguing that this Well Go USA release is a significant upgrade in image quality, as can clearly be seen by doing side by side comparisons of the screenshots where I attempted to duplicate (or come close to duplicating) some of the screenshots Dustin included in his review. Clarity is noticeably improved, and the kind of milky haze that overlaid much of the imagery in the Tokyo Shock release is gone. That said, the 16mm source only provides so much detail (and especially fine detail) in midrange and wide shots, so expectations must be tempered in that regard.

The palette is at least somewhat more saturated in this presentation, and overall looks healthier to my eyes, though Miike's stylistic proclivities mean that things are tweaked rather aggressively at various points in the film, as can easily be seen in several of the screenshots accompanying this review. Many scenes have kind of sickly yellow or green tones predominating, an approach that makes things like highly unnatural (which is not to say inaccurate). That said, there are large swaths of this film where things haven't been artificially altered, and in those moments, the palette does look at least relatively natural (see screenshots 3, 8 and 9 for a few examples).

Well Go USA's sometimes slightly spotty compression issues (mostly revolving around banding) are largely (and commendably) absent here, and in fact I'd be hard pressed to state definitively that some of what I noticed that I'd term problematic is due to compression or source issues (see screenshot 10 in this review and compare it to screenshot 16 in Dustin's review).

Ichi the Killer Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

I was frankly kind of surprised to see the low score Dustin gave to the Tokyo Shock release's audio (a 1.5, barely better than the video). This release does not have the English language tracks that the Tokyo Shock release does, something that might argue this release should be scored even worse than the Tokyo Shock version, though I personally found no major issues with this release's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track, other than (as Dustin noted in his review of the Tokyo Shock version) a somewhat underwhelming use of the surround channels and somewhat anemic LFE. There is separation here and even discrete channelization, but the film is so cacophonous so much of the time (something it in fact shares with Natural Born Killers) that it becomes hard to aurally process things at times. Fidelity is fine throughout the presentation, and dialogue is cleanly rendered.

Ichi the Killer Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Still Gallery (1080p; 00:38)


• Trailer (1080p; 1:29)

Note: As tends to be the case with Well Go USA releases, these minimal supplements have been authored to follow one another automatically. Trailers for other Well Go USA releases are then authored to follow the trailer for Ichi the Killer automatically. Those other trailers also play automatically at disc boot up.

• Audio Commentary with Director Takashi Miike and Manga Artist / Writer Hideo Yamamoto can be found under the Setup Menu.

Ichi the Killer Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The astute reader will note I'm scoring this film a 3.5, something that would normally bring a "Recommended" statement at the end of the review, but I simply can't in good conscience recommend Ichi the Killer to the uninitiated. For those who know the film and are prepared for what they have in store, there's no doubt that this release is a much more satisfying viewing experience from a purely technical standpoint. Unfortunately, many of the Tokyo Shock supplements have not made it over to this release, so this may be one of those cult items where consumers may want to adopt a "both/and" strategy rather than an "either/or" one.