Demon City, now streaming on Netflix, is a revenge thriller written and directed by Seiji Tanaka (Melancholic). Wait, scratch that. Actually the only thrill here is single-minded revenge. Adapted from the manga Oni Goroshi by Masamichi Kawabe, Demon City stars Toma Ikuta (Beyond Goodbye) as Sakata, a guy who keeps his work life separate from his home life, mostly because in the former he’s a vicious hitman and in the latter a loving husband and father. But that all changes when his work/life balance is radically disturbed by a gang of criminal freaks, who obscure their identities behind traditional Japanese demon masks. Taro Saruga, Miou Tanaka, Masahiro Higashide, and Mai Kiryû also star.
DEMON CITY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: When veteran Japanese actor Naoto Takenaka appears early on in Demon City as a feared gangster boss who slices into his underlings with arrogance and menace, we were gearing up for a Yakuza movie bloodfest, with gangs of dudes attacking each other in the name of their clan. But Demon quickly turns away from that expectation, or at least holds onto it til later, as Sakata (Ikuta), a hitman by trade, is prevented from retiring in the worst way possible. He always kept his bloody work separate from his idyllic life at home. Until a group making moves to take over the city of Shinjo – its criminal element and its economic base – casually commit a few acts of godawful violence before leaving Sakata for dead.
Fast-forward 12 years. When Fujita (Suruga) installs an unspeaking Sakata, who has become wheelchair-bound and partially paralytic, in a rundown Shinjo City apartment, it would seem to be the place where the former hitman would live out his days in regret. But his past won’t leave him alone. A suspiciously confident new mayor has transformed the city’s waterfront with a flashy hotel-casino development, a criminal bunch known as the Kimen-gumi have consolidated their power on the streets, and everything starts to feel connected as the men Sakata encountered years before – who obscure their identities behind elaborate and frightening Oni masks – resurface to target him again.
Sakata still doesn’t say much. But he’s nowhere near as immobile or helpless as he seems, and soon he has returned to his bunker-style hitman’s lair to stock up on formidable bladed weapons and fire up his old ride, a burly matte-finish Mustang Mach 1. Cue a few entertainingly outrageous, continuous shot-style fight sequences that involve Sakata dispatching many generic thugs en route to the name-brand thugs, those Kimen-gumi goons who hide their depravity behind their masks. Even if Sakata can somehow catch bullets on the blade of his custom cleaver, he’s not totally invincible, and it’s equally outrageous how much physical damage he can withstand. There is a running theme in Demon City. “The moment when someone is consumed by their desire for revenge is the moment they become a demon.” But depending on who is being consumed, a demon might also become an avenging angel.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Internet chatter has linked Demon City with the animated 1988 action film Demon City Shinjuku, though they aren’t related. Drive comes to mind here, as does John Woo’s 2023 film Silent Night – in that one, Joel Kinnaman’s starring role is largely dialogue-free as he goes about violently avenging his murdered family. And if you’re watching Demon City but haven’t caught up with Indonesian filmmaker Timo Tjahjanto’s The Shadow Strays, get on it.
Performance Worth Watching: Maybe Sakata’s almost-but-not-quite comical resilience? How much of this guy’s body can be hacked off, shot away, gouged into, or punctured by an arrow from a daikyū bow? The percentage is high.
Memorable Dialogue: We’ll leave in Netflix’s closed-caption prompts, because they amplify the devilish mirth with which Miou Tanaka delivers this villainous line: “[Laughs maniacally] ‘My loyalty is to our master! I swore that I would devote my body and soul for a better world. Can you even understand what that means?’ [Laughs maniacally]”
Sex and Skin: A few brief scenes to establish the ugly human trafficking racket and uglier personal perversions of the Kimen-gumi gang.
Our Take: We gotta hand it to Toma Ikuta. In Demon City, as Sakata, Ikuta has maybe 20 lines of dialogue total. (20 is generous.) But we still came away from this film with a fully-formed understanding of his motivations in either department: his killing of many, many bad guys, and his longing for a homelife that was taken from him. Sakata doesn’t even get a “Yeah, I’m thinking I’m back” moment to sink his teeth into. Instead, he stays largely silent and totally violent as Demon progresses. It’s a cool performance for what he does do – which is to orchestrate numerous improvisational death blows, even when Sakata is half-paralyzed – but it’s often a cooler performance for what he doesn’t do, which is any kind of grandstanding.
Ikuta is mostly on mute as Sakata, but Demon City wasn’t gonna trade on its screenplay, anyway. It’s the fighting and bloodshed that’s the draw here, as in a one-versus-many staircase battle that at one point includes Sakata utilizing one of his adversaries as a murderous rappelling device. Throw in a few slight plot twists, and a few more references to the fanatical, slightly mystical nature of the masked Kimen-gumi, and you’ve got a satisfyingly single-minded revenge movie that doesn’t waste time jawing about it.
Our Call: Demon City is a STREAM IT, though this verdict will admittedly depend on your tolerance for relentless violence. Nobody’s watching this movie for what it says, because it never says much.
Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.
