Some plots are as immortal as gods, resurfacing time and time again to tell the same story so many times, you’d be forgiven for suffering a near critical case of deja vu by even reading the synopsis. One of the most popular of these reoccurring storylines is that of the vengeful killer who returns out of the void of retirement/coma/death to enact a protracted massacre to repay the murder of a loved one. Various filmmakers have tried various styled to make this well-worn tale feel as bloodily fresh as a newly slashed throat, but what with the rise in direct to streaming movies over the last twenty years or so, it seems like we’re getting a new version every other week.
Hoping to plumb some originality from this exhausted trope is Demon City, the result of a violent team up between director Seiji Tanaka and Netflix who both conspire to bring a sprawling Manga series to the screen – but will familiarity breed contempt like with so many of the streaming services action films?
Shuhei Sakata is the bloodiest, most brutal hitman working in Shinjo City, but after we witness the man at work as he butchers his way through a Yakuza safehouse with a razor sharp, rectangle blade, we soon realise that his reward for finishing such a bloodthirsty task is far more valuable than just money. You see, much like many cinematic hitmen before him, Sakata has just wrapped up his last job and looks forward to settling down fully with his beloved wife and his doting daughter once he’s washed the gore of over a dozen men out of his hair.
However, once he’s all cleaned up, he finds that it’s immediately time yo get messy once again and he finds his family held at gunpoint by five men all wearing ornate, demonic masks from Japanese folklore. These men are all members of some sort of crime syndicate who believe that Sakata is the human equivalent of something called the Demon Of Shinjo City who is rumoured to rise every 50 years to cause unspeakable carnage and they claim that killing the hitman and his family will be a great service to the people of the city. However, after shooting down his wife and child and putting a bullet into Sakata’s skull, these five demons inexplicably allow the managed hitman to live and twelve years later we find him still in a vegetative state being cared for by a former employee of the villains who took him in out of guilt.
However, when word finally reaches the demons that Sakata is still alive, one of the quintet decides to rectify it post haste only to find that the addled hitman is somehow able to shrug off massive brain trauma to order to fight back. Before you know it, Sakata is back in the game and targeting all the criminal enterprises that the demons have been building while he’s been drooling, but matters get complicated pretty quick when it turns out that the head demons civilian guise is someone pretty damn important to the city, and worse yet, the reports of his young daughters death may have been greatly exagerated.
Speaking of greatly exagerated deaths… it’s time to shed blood. Like, a lot of blood.
Demon City seems to be cursed to exist as one of those action movies that only stand out if you haven’t watched any of the sizable list of other movies that Seiji Tanaka seems to be pillaging from at a frenzied rate. While it’s exagerated, Kill Bill style tone and it’s Anime-esque leanings obviously mark it out as a flick where realism should fear to tread, the sheer amount of moments from other films that leap out while you’re watching ends up getting fairly distracting after a while. While the aforementioned Kill Bill is an obvious touchstone and the scary hitman trope and unrestrained bloodletting resemble the likes of John Wick and The Raid, oddly the film that mostly came to mind was the truly absurd Steven Seagal epic, Hard To Kill, which saw the scowly, ponytailed one shrug off a seven year coma like a bout of the flu.
It’s a shame that Tanaka isn’t bothered about trying to explore anything new, because his action scenes are pretty perky and plenty punishing enough to hold the attention even if they’re not going to cause 87North or Gareth Evans to lose any sleep any time soon. However, what’s most strange to me is that while Demon City is based on a fairly dense Manga named Onigoroshi, it doesn’t use the more overt supernatural undertones that the original source material reportedly has. While this would then place the film somewhere closer to The Crow, I feel that maybe it could have made things feel a little fresher than they do.
Also, the film doesn’t seem particularly interested in expanding any of the more interesting aspects of the plot. One such neglected story line involves l the fact that the lead demon is actually the mayor of the city and that his scarred enforcer is actually his twin brother who does everything he is bid. In fact, in a weird turn of events, the pair get a flashback that skims over their origin curiously late in the game (around 20 minutes from the end) that may have made the film more interesting if it was more thoroughly explored. Elsewhere, you’d think that to maximise drama, the film would put itself out trying to explore the conundrum of one of the demons raising Sakata’s daughter as his own and all the thorny aspect that come with it, but aside from one major confrontation midway through the film, Demon City gives up on following this thread in favour of more carnage.
Happily, said carnage is fun, if a little uninspired and the sight of bodies being ragdolled across the room spaying (mostly CGI) blood all over the place ensures that lovers of harrowing bouts of fisticuffs will take something away from watching the movie. An early fight that sees a newly revived Sakata flail his way through his first fight in twelve years while his wasted limbs struggle to keep him upright us conceptually cool and nicely ridiculous – although if you find yourself getting choked to death with a blanket by a guy who has been in a vegetative state for over a decade, you might need to turn in your subscription to villain monthly magazine. Yet, even though there’s plenty of violence to follow, it doesn’t quite have the impact you desperately want it to until the final showdown, which sees Toma Ikuta’s unstoppable hero keep fighting even when he loses a limb – something that not even John Wick and all his near endless lives can boast.
What will be undemanding fun to the casual action fan will no doubt be a frustrating trip through memory lane as Demon City replays the hits of other, better movies in the vain hope that recombining them in a slightly different order will birth something new. But while the blood sprays and the score provides endless guitar licks, Sakata proves that for all his deadly moves and devastating body count, his only real achilles heel is originality – which apparently just how Netflix likes them.
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