Demon City Review
Director: Seiji Tanaka
Date Created: 2025-02-28 19:38
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Demon City Review: Seiji Tanaka helms this action revenge film which is also known as Demon City 鬼ゴロシ, an adaptation of Masamichi Kawabe’s Onigoroshi. Tôma Ikuta stars as Shûhei Sakata, a retired infamous hitman who tries to leave his life of violence behind, but is dragged back into mayhem. He is supported by Masahiro Higashide, Miou Tanaka, Ami Tôma, and Tarô Suruga.
The movie wastes its time building the life of Sakata after he completes his last mission, taking out a Yakuza operation in Shinjo, and returning to a peaceful existence with his wife and daughter. But naturally, things don’t exactly go that way. A masked group known as the Kimen-gumi arrives, kills his family, and leaves him for dead. Jump forward 12 years—Sakata, amazingly still alive but vegetative, is stirred when another assassination plot is concocted against him. And from there, well… it’s full-on bloodbath.
Demon City Review
If you’ve ever seen any action revenge movie, you’re likely already going to know how Demon City Oni Goroshi is going to finish. The “former assassin drawn back into violence” cliche has been done to death, and this movie doesn’t really try to buck the trend. From the start, you can easily figure out who the bad guys are, what’s going to go down next, and even how everything is going to be wrapped up. So if you’re in the mood for some serious, brainy storytelling, this isn’t for you. But really? That didn’t really bother me.
Why? Because Netflix’s Demon City makes up for its predictable plot with raw, uncompromising violence. This is not a movie that holds back—each fight is brutal, each injury seems to ache, and the action seems real. No excessively choreographed, excessively pretentious fight choreography to be found here. Rather, it is sloppy, bloody, and just so over-the-top. And I have to admit, I sort of enjoyed it.
If there’s one reason to see Demon City, it’s the action scenes. The hospital scene alone had me white-knuckling the armrest—Sakata, effectively crippled, crawls across the floor, battling attackers in the most desperate, rough-around-the-edges manner humanly possible. It’s frenzied, it’s unpredictable, and it’s really exciting. Unlike most revenge movies where the hero magically regains full strength in a training montage of melodramatic heroism, this one actually makes you feel how beat up Sakata is. He flails, he stumbles, he gets knocked around—but that just makes his battles all the more intense.
Tôma Ikuta sells it outright. He speaks little, but he doesn’t—his stance, his face, and his unadorned physicality to the role speak volumes. You can feel every punch, every slash, and every ounce of fury in him. It’s been a while since I’ve seen an actor go this far to make a fight look real, and to be frank, that alone is worth watching the movie.
One thing that Demon City tries to do is inject some social commentary. Shinjo city is hell on earth, run by evil politicians and police, the rich getting richer and the poor trying to survive. Sounds thrilling, right? Well… kinda. The thing is, the movie does nothing with this idea. It’s just background noise, not something that the film actually engages with in some way. Yeah, sure, we get a glimpse at how terrible it’s become, but really it’s just a pretext for Sakata’s revenge and not actually something the film is concerned with.
Masahiro Higashide is sufficient as one of our main villains, and Miou Tanaka’s eerie laugh does introduce some randomness into the equation. Otherwise, however, the villains are fairly standard. They’re evil because they need to be, not because they have any kind of interesting motivation. And while they are definitely despicable people, I didn’t actually come to hate them the way you should with a good villain. Instead, they’re just. there. Doing their thing, but not really memorable.
Summing Up
If you approach Demon City thinking you’re going to get a revolutionary action movie, then you’re going to be let down. But if you’re prepared for a bloody, revenge-driven revenge movie with some amazing fight choreography and a lead actor fully invested in the role, then yeah, it’s worth your time.
To me, predictability was irrelevant because the action was just that good. It’s nasty, it’s gritty, and it’s what an action movie ought to be—quick, intense, and mercilessly so. The story may not be new, and the bad guys may have been tougher, but Tôma Ikuta’s acting and the excellent stunt work redeem it.
Demon City 2025 is now streaming on Netflix.
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