A film stars Tadanobu Asano as Kakihara, a sadomasochist yakuza enforcer who enjoys generating & getting pain in about equal measure. To reinforce this, he is shown when by using his mouth widenend in two sides by many inches, with his cheeks held together with piercings. Kakihara's stamp Anjo vanishes a single nighttime fallowing he is murdered in the particularly grisly fashion. a mysterious class action arrives & cleans higher everthing grounds to believe of the slaying, & will require the Three million yen Anjo had inside his room.

Numbers of of Kakihara's compatriots, including his English and Chinese-speaking girlfriend Karen (Alien Sun), suspect that Anjo simply took a money & ran, however Kakihara is convinced a human is alive. His investigation leads him to viciously torture a member of a rival kindred, Suzuki (Susumu Terajima) by suspending him from the ceiling by putting metallic hooks through the human's back, shoving stilettoes across his person, & throwing boiling grease (from either the meal of tempura) on him. (Within an case of the film's pleasantly black humor, when asked what he is doing, Kakihara responds nonchalantly, "Just a little torture, nothing special.")

A human turns bent on exist as clean-handed. To produce damages, Kakihara slices bump off section of his tongue and offers it to Suzuki's boss (Jun Kunimura). Notwithstanding, the human world health organization tipped Kakihara bump off to Suzuki & can keep around extra rattling info, a disheleved husband nicknamed Jijii (Shinya Tsukamoto), is nowhere to be observed.

Jijii is, when it turns out, secretly orchestrating cases. Under his wing occurs as young human, Ichi (Nao Omori), a confused & apparently psychotic person world health organization is commonly retiring & fearful, however becomes murderous while enraged (& world health organization has crying fits fallowing committing his execution). Ichi outfits himself within a rubber lawsuit by having shoes that develop razors concealed in a heels, & fallowing spying in the pandar brutalizing the cocotte kills number one the fancy man, so the girl. Jijii hwhen therefore manipulated Ichi as to confuse sexual arousal by having murderous lust inside him, & accomplished this by creating the false memory inside him of witnessing a rape inside high school -- which he felt ashamed for wanting to participate in like than prevent.

Kakihara is sooner or later discarded of the syndicate for his transgressions, but not prior to getting word of Ichi. He becomes fascinated by owning this "total sadist," since maybe across him he may eventually buy a ultimate trouble he has been looking for -- a single which neither his girlfriend nor his boss may give him. Inside a related plot development, Jijii tries for better control across Ichi by with Karen seduce him, however the project backfires dreadfully & Karen is slaughtered.

Kakiharthe, along by owning deuce corrupt police-detective twin brothers, finds a lady of pleasure attached sustaining Jijii's gang. Inside one of a film's additional distressful scenes, it torture her for references (primarily by cutting her nipples dispatch). It buy one of Jijii's henchmen & torture him to locate retired in which Ichi is. But, at this point Ichi shows higher at Kakihara's compound. Ichi & Kakiharthe at length look at both more in a rooftop. A film so seemingly departs from either literal reality and gives us a face-off that appears to choose place upstairs of of these or even the more of the independent characters, however it remains deliberately obscure which.

Trivia
As a publicity gimmick, barf bags were handed out at a Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) to people attending a midnight screening of this film.

Once Kakihara's cell phone rings, a ringtone is the moving picture's theme song.

A fenced-around rooftop within which Kakihara & Ichi battle is the equivalent 1 seen in Takashi Miike's Dead or even Alive: Hanzaisha (1999), in which iii policemen talk just about slaying & a Yakuza.

For a sequence where his character is suspended from either hooks & tortured, actor Susumu Terajima mandatory xii hours of makeup & other preparation, and so spent 12 more hours shooting the scene.

A title Ichi means Single which is how come he wears a yellow first in his costume.

Director Takashi Miike reveals on a Me TokyoShock DVD release that a ejaculate utilized in a close-higher in the period of the intro sequence, once the film's title raises away from the flow of any stream of cum, is very.

Director Takashi Miike originally meant to stand andy skinner of a original mangthe, Hideo Yamamoto, to write a script totally around manga form, however the idea fell across while Yamamoto felt he may not complete it due to writer's prevent.