An Entertaining Bloodbath
Summary
Demon City hardly reinvents the action genre and there is a pacing lag in the middle however, it has an incredible music score filled with electric guitars and it has plenty brutal action too making this worth a watch.
Plot: Framed for his family’s murder and left for dead, an ex-hitman will stop at nothing to exact revenge on the masked “demons” who have taken over his city.
Review: *Mild spoilers ensue* Demon City is a live action adaptation of the manga “Oni Goroshi” by Masamichi Kawabe which I have never read, so I am just judging this as a movie on its own.
This is your typical hitman out for revenge tale and doesn’t bring anything new to the action genre, but this is still a fun time with plenty of brutal kills and a massive bodycount. The pacing does lag a little in the middle and I feel like the rest of the film never quite lives up to the opening 15 minutes.
Tôma Ikuta plays our lead Shûhei Sakata who doesn’t say very much, but he is very good at killing people and will stop at nothing to avenge his family. He’s hardly an interesting character and you don’t really feel anything for anyone, but personally I just enjoy the carnage… of which there is plenty. We get several fight scenes and it doesn’t skimp on gore either.
The finale with Sakata taking out legions of goons is one of the highlights and yet I hated seeing him so utterly destroyed by the end; he was never going to live happily ever after, but I wanted him to at least spend more time with his daughter Ryô.
The music is absolutely outstanding as it’s all epic electric guitars; admittedly it does feel like it belongs in another film, but it’s one of my favourite aspects of Demon City.
I love the look of the villains using the Japanese Oni masks which give them an air of creepiness and extra mystery; they are all evil monsters too, so they are easy to hate.
Overall, Demon City is nothing new, but it’s elevated by some graphic violence and a huge bodycount; the music score is also incredibly epic making this at least worth watching once.