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Released
2001 · FILM

Ichi the Killer

Sadomasochistic yakuza enforcer Kakihara hunts his vanished boss through Tokyo’s underworld, only to confront Ichi—a repressed psychopath whose twisted capacity for pain could shatter both their worlds.

Love really hurts.

Directed by
Rated
BBFC · 18
Runtime
129 min
Language
JA
CrimeDrama

Synopsis

Kakihara, a sadomasochistic yakuza enforcer searching for his missing boss, encounters Ichi, a repressed and psychotic killer who may be capable of inflicting levels of pain that Kakihara has only dreamed of.

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 36

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by Yasushi ShimamuraShot by Hideo YamamotoScored by Karera MusicationDesigned by Takashi Sasaki

Box Office

2001 · Box office

📉 Underperformed — grossed 0.1× its budget

Why 2.5×?

Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).

Worldwide gross

$81K

Budget$1.4M
Worldwide gross$81K
break-even (2.5×)

Re-release box office

20184 theaters
$23K($30K today)
20173 theaters
$9K($12K today)
Total re-release
$31K

Domestic gross earned in theatrical re-release, by year · adjusted for inflation

Also known as

  • Ichi the Killerde
  • Koroshiya 1de
  • Koroshiya Ichide
  • Ichi the Killeren
  • Koroshiya 1es
  • Ichi the Killerfr

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