Demon City Oni Goroshi is a slick revenge movie.

 

Not all movies are created equally. Some are profound, asking the audience difficult philosophical questions that they may ponder for the rest of their lives, others are simple, straightforward flicks that are just made as pure enjoyment and escapism from our world for however long the runtime is. After having watched the live-action adaptation of Demon City Oni Goroshi, I would place it in the latter. That's not a bad thing. 

After performing one last job, killing a Yakuza family, legendary hitman Shuhei Sakata is set to retire. Unfortunately for him, he is unable to live the quiet life that he wanting with his family as they are almost immediately ambushed by a mysterious group of men wearing masks. Sakata helplessly watches as his wife is murdered in cold blood before the group also turns the gun on his daughter, Ryo. After getting shot himself, he is framed for his families deaths and sent into a prison hospital and spends the next 12 years in a vegetative state. Through some miracle, during a fateful encounter, he receives the opportunity to start taking vengeance on those who wronged him as he recovers his physical capabilities. 

Seiji Tanaka is not the most prolific of directors, having only had one prior movie credit to his name before working on Demon City Oni Goroshi, that being the underappreciated low-budget thriller, Melancholic. Despite his lack of experience, he handles the huge task of helming the live-action adaptation with all of the finesse of a director with thrice as much experience. The cinematography is gorgeous with a dynamic array of shot types, techniques and solid usage of lighting creating a very engaging movie that is pleasing to one's eyes. My personal favourite shots are two wide angle shots that establish the setting of two scenes near the beginning of the movie, followed closely by what appears to be a top-down, panning one-shot sequence towards the tail end of the feature. I think that the sequence wasn't actually one-shot, but the cuts are quite cleverly disguised. I could be wrong on that though, as much like the whole movie, it moves at a rather brisk pace.

There are some tremendously fun action sequences throughout the whole movie. One particularly creative sequence takes place inside the confines of a factory, with a forklift and a digger both being put to good use within the action. Another fun sequence is the aforementioned one-shot type sequence, which sees Sakata fighting his way up a flight of stairs. There are several times were we see Sakata take on large numbers of opponents and this makes for fun viewing. These sequences aren't perfect, not by a long shot with certain things such as some times were enemies go flying from a swing of his hatchet or something else. There's also some rather disappointing and unnecessary cuts during a fight scene towards the beginning of the movie, Sure, these cuts might have tightened things up a bit and saved time on the movie, but it does take me out of the experience when it happens in the middle of a fight scene. Despite the flaws, there is a certain leeway I can give the movie due to the rule of cool.

When I heard that legendary musician Tomoyasu Hotei was providing music for the soundtrack, I was immediately hyped. Whilst the music he created for Demon City isn't as memorable as that what he made for Battles Without Honour or Humanity, it still gets the blood pumping and enhances the action on screen. I greatly enjoyed his guitar work. 

The entire movie would have bombed hard if the leading man wasn't chosen correctly. Ikuta Toma is a phenomenal performer and whilst he didn't have a whole lot of dialogue to work with, he made the most of his screentime, using body language and facial expressions to tell a lot with little speaking. His stamina also stood out as being impressive as he had more than one extended action sequence and excelled at them. If I had to some up his performance in a couple of words, I'd choose to label it: Pure badass. Oh, he also seems to have a thing for scenes involving him choking the life out of his enemies, between this movie and Keibuho Daimajin. 

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed Demon City despite the flaws. It's pure cathartic fun and escapism, seeing the bad guys get their just desserts is satisfying. One particularly enjoyable moment is seeing real life scumbag Hisahide Masashiro be wrecked on screen. Whilst I don't like the guy at all, at least I can tolerate him if he's portraying a bad guy that gets what's coming to him. I highly recommend the movie to those that enjoy a good revenge flick that doesn't require you to think too hard and just enjoy the action sequences.