Ichi (2008)

Ichi (2008)
Japanese Title: Ichi
Translation: (n/a)

Starring: Haruka Ayase, Shido Nakamura, Yosuke Kubozuka, Takao Osawa, Go Riju
Director:  Fumihiko Sori
Action Director: ???

 

I was excited to watch and review this film. Lord knows that this site needs more representatives from the chambara genre to balance out the large number of martial arts films from Hong Kong, China, and Taiwan that I’ve covered over the past few years. Said chambara films aren’t extremely common here in Brazil, beyond the works of Kurosawa. But as I was watching this movie the other night (or morning, as I was up until past 4 a.m. watching it), a strange thought occurred to me: I really don’t know what to say about it. It’s as if years and years of not watching samurai movies has finally taken its toll on my ability to address a recent entry in the genre.

That isn’t to say that I haven’t watched any such films. I’ve simply seen very few. While I’m proud to declare that I have seen The Seven Samurai, I cannot say the same of Kurosawa’s other genre-defining samurai films, Sanjuro and, of course, Yojimbo. I was lucky to find Shogun Assassin on videotape back before my mission, which my brother and I watched together (after all, my brother owned the GZA’s album Liquid Swordz, which sampled a lot of dialogue from that movie). Shortly after that, Blockbuster Video, which hadn’t quite started sucking yet, had a copy of The Lupine Wolf, aka Lighting Swords of Death, aka Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart to Hades. Watched that, I did.

Heck, it was from Blockbuster Video that I rented first two (and only two) Zatoichi films. Those were Zatoichi and a Chest of Gold and Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo. The former was pretty entertaining and had A LOT of action in it, which was always fun. The latter was…well…not so fun. There was little action and interaction between the two leads. Heck, the only entertaining thing about Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo was listening to Toshiro Mifune say “Sensei!” in a mocking tone. I was supposed to watch the Takeshi Kitano Zatoichi film on my vacation to Maceió last year; the resort I was staying at had it in their library. I passed it up, however, in favor of Jean-Claude Van Damme’s In Hell. That should tell you what sort of person I am.

So there’s a blind girl named Ichi who wanders around the countryside, begging for money and for a place to stay. Apparently, most Japanese men during whatever period this film takes place in are closet rapists and salacious scum, since the film opens with some guy trying to rape Ichi. She unsheathes the classic cane sword and chops off the man’s fingers before he can get very far, though. We then learn that she’s travelling with another blind woman who regularly offers her body in exchange for money. The woman’s latest John refuses to pay, however, and when the woman insists, the man and his friends try to beat her to death. Their attentions turn to Ichi, whom they’d like to rape as well. A bumbling swordsman shows up and tries to help, but is unable to draw his sword at the crucial moment. Ichi steps in and cuts down all three would-be sex offenders.

Ichi and the swordsman head off to the nearest town together, where Ichi sets up shop at the local inn. There she befriends a little kid and his alcoholic father. She also helps the swordsman win at gambling—she can hear how the dice have fallen. That brings both of them into conflict with a band of evil ronin, known as the Banki Bandits. Ichi kills several members of the band, but the credit ends up going to her companion. The town’s most affluent family hires the guy to be their bodyguard, despite his not being able to draw a sword (thankfully, the movie does supply a reason for that).

When the Banki eventually do return to wreak havoc on the family, Ichi steps in and reduces most of the gang to mulch. She allows herself to get captured and kills a few more of the gang before the leader bests her in a sword duel. After being tortured, her swordsman friend rescues her and nurses her back to health. But, before she can get totally better, the Banki make one last raid on the town.

It’s almost hard to believe that the film is two hours long, considering the ease with which I was able to summarize the plot. The plot is padded out with a number of a character bonding moments, flashbacks, and even a few random asides. My favorite example of the latter is when the second-in-command of the Banki Bandits hires a prostitute to sleep with the leader, making her enter the guy’s quarters blindfolded. While getting it on, the blindfold falls off and the woman respond to her partner’s appearance with a look of disgust and horror. Suddenly, you hear a SNCHT!!! and some blood splatters on the wall. The scene isn’t explained and really serves no point in the story, not even to give male viewers some T&A, since we only see the woman’s bare back.

The flashbacks, on the other hand, do a pretty good job of explaining why Ichi is so emotionally withdrawn and what exactly her objective is. It also reinforces what I stated earlier about the film’s message being that Japanese men of [whatever period] were all rapists (or were to be such if given the opportunity). It also shows the unfortunate sexual politics of the era, in that the female victims of rape were persecuted even more than those responsible. I’d like to say that humanity on the whole has improved since then, but unfortunately, that hasn’t been the case in some parts of the world.

There’s a fair bit of swordplay on display, although it always comes in quick flashes of economic sword strokes. There are no drawn-out exchanges of balletic sword techniques as one might find in a Chinese film. Ichi dispatches most of her opponents in a single underhand stroke of her cane sword. I’m not going to complain, since that’s how the Japanese have choreographed their sword duels (with a few exceptions) for decades, so Ichi is really just following protocol in that respect. There aren’t any colorful villains on display or Lone Wolf and Cub-esque scenes where Ichi levels an entire army. What we get is fun, although I felt really cheated at the end when Ichi sat out most of the climax. Boo! That really brought the film down from “Pretty good” to “Eh, not bad.”