Have you ever seen one “John Wick“Movie and thought to yourself,” I wonder if this would be even better if it was a little more tricky, a hell much stupid, and its soundtrack had about 9,000 times as much flash-microwave? “Let’s just assume you have it. Well, good news! Netflix – whose original content often feels like a response to a rhetorical question that no man has ever intended to ask – you have covered and then some with “Demon City“A fun Japanese action film It adds exactly nothing to the “retired hitman seeks revenge” sub -genre and has a decent time to do so.
Aggressively paired down from Masamichi Kawabe’s sprawling Manga Series “Onigoroshi” (which extends over more than 150 chapters and counting), Seiji Tanaka’s adaptation dicks the supernatural harmonics for its source material to conduct a lean – and very meaningful – story about Yakuza retribution. “Honey & Clover” actor Toma Ikuta Stars like Sakata, the deadliest killer in all of Shinjo City, and “Demon City” makes plenty of the reputation under a prologue that illuminates the narrow film’s hyper violence. Sakata’s one -man coating on a Yakuza Safehouse is not something you have not seen before, but the sequence is full of the humble little moments of visual invention that requires your attention (eg an audiovisual gag that rhymes a decapitation with a gushing lawn).
This massacre was, of course, supposed to be Sakata’s “a last job” before putting away his stupid meat splendor for good and settled in his life as the most loving father; We even see him stand in a shower and look at the water pearl down his scars in slow movement, the universal sign for “I put my past life behind me.” Unfortunately, the local crime syndicate has other plans, and Sakata has barely time to switch to its sweat pants before his home is invaded by some ruthless gangsters who wear scary demon masks. The bad guys seem to think that Sakata is the so -called “demon of shinjo city”, a local myth that probably rises from its grave every 50 years to go on an unstoppable killing spree. They want to pinch it in the bud as some kind of public service. For reasons that are still not entirely clear at the end of the film, Kimen-Gumi is instructed to leave Sakata alive after they fired a bullet in his head. Hitman’s wife and their young daughter do not appear the same mercy.
Certainly, the decision will leave “Demon of Shinjo City” in a vegetative state to come back to haunt Yakuza at a critical moment in the future! Cut into: 12 years later, when the comically evil mayor of Shinjo (Matsuya Onoe as Sunohara) is revealing an entertainment facility with several billion dollars that includes Japan’s first proper casino. As if he acknowledges what an uncomfortable time it would be too Sakata to get out of his coma and start murdering the people whose blood money paid for Sunohara’s monuments of corruption, the gangsters appear at Sakata’s hospital room to end what they began. Of course, they show that kill the guy a little more difficult than just pulling in the contact.
The scraper that follows finds “demon city” on its scary and blood-soaked best, like a dazzled Ikuta flops around the hospital floor as he recycles his IV pipe to a deadly weapon. Some pictures of Dodgy CGI are not enough to reduce the chaotic charm of this mini-act, which finds Tanaka who bends its muscles as an excellent manager for the close-up. Always violent and often a touch seed than you can expect from something with the typical Netflix gloss, the film has real joy in the wild cruelty of its characters. And although it is obviously reflected in the fight scenes (which is too good to be so few in number), it also bleeds into the otherwise generic stories that paddle the film between them. No supportive character is safe from Kimen-Gumi’s reach, and even Sakata is happy to eliminate its old friends but a second thought is just as good in a movie whose plot would have all form and remain power of loose sawdust if not for the brutality that binds it together.
It would be a spoiler to reveal the other respect in which “Demon City” goes out of its way of invoking a certain illuality, but Tanaka’s adaptation is so boring-and so half committed to its own lore-that nothing its characters are or do can meaningfully complicate the simple fact that they want to kill each other. The fact that the film pauses in the midst of its climate quarrel to unpack the final manager’s soap story betrayed the failed intentions of a project that hoped to create their own “John Wick” -like myth and had to settle for their own “John Wick” -like staircase (which is obviously shot to look at). Hack as it might be to invoke “John Wick” instead of the Yakuza classics from which “Demon City” cribs from, it is clear that Netflix wanted to finance a movie that had more in common with Chad Stahelski than Kinji Fukasaku.
Again, hack as it may be to arrange another digitally changed staircase Omer, even the old trop is somewhat revived by the inventive kingdom shown here, just like the fighting scene that follows Sakata invites you to arms a fire extinguisher – among the most common action movies props – in a way I never really seen before. It is enough to make “Demon City” a good place to spend 100 minutes of your time, but all interest in returning for another stay would be due to Tanaka’s ability to find a way into this story and not just around it.
Rating: C+
“Demon City” is now flowing on Netflix.
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