Have you ever ever watched a “John Wick” film and thought to your self, “I ponder if this is able to be even higher if it have been just a little extra lurid, a hell of lots dumber, and its soundtrack had roughly 9,000 occasions as a lot flash-microwaved cheese rock?” Let’s simply assume you’ve got. Nicely, excellent news! Netflix — whose authentic content material typically seems like a response to a rhetorical query no human being has ever thought to ask — has you lined after which some with “Demon Metropolis,” a enjoyable Japanese motion movie that provides precisely nothing to the “retired hitman seeks revenge” sub-genre and has an honest time doing it.
Aggressively pared down from Masamichi Kawabe’s sprawling manga sequence “Onigoroshi” (which spans greater than 150 chapters and counting), Seiji Tanaka’s adaptation ditches the supernatural overtones of its supply materials in an effort to pursue a lean — and really imply — story of yakuza requital. “Honey & Clover” actor Toma Ikuta stars as Sakata, the deadliest murderer in all of Shinjo Metropolis, and “Demon Metropolis” makes good on that repute over the course of a prologue that highlights the cleverness of the movie’s hyper-violence. Sakata’s one-man siege on a yakuza safehouse isn’t something you haven’t seen earlier than, however the sequence is affected by devious little moments of visible ingenuity that demand your consideration (e.g., an audiovisual gag that rhymes a decapitation with a gushing garden sprinkler).
This bloodbath, after all, was alleged to be Sakata’s “one final job” earlier than he put his snub-nosed meat cleaver away for good and settled into his life as essentially the most loving dad; we even see him stand in a bathe and watch the water bead down his scars in slow-motion, the common signal for “I’m placing my previous life behind me.” Alas, the native crime syndicate has different plans, and Sakata barely has time to alter into his sweatpants earlier than his house is invaded by some ruthless gangsters carrying scary demon masks. The dangerous guys appear to suppose that Sakata is the so-called “Demon of Shinjo Metropolis,” an area fantasy who supposedly rises from his grave each 50 years in an effort to go on an unstoppable killing spree. They need to nip that within the bud as some type of public service. For causes that also aren’t fully clear by the top of the film, the Kimen-gumi are instructed to depart Sakata alive after they fireplace a bullet into his head. The hitman’s spouse and their younger daughter aren’t proven the identical mercy.
Certainly the choice to depart the “Demon of Shinjo Metropolis” in a vegetative state received’t come again to hang-out the yakuza at a vital second sooner or later! Lower to: 12 years later, when the comically evil mayor of Shinjo (Matsuya Onoe as Sunohara) is about to unveil a multi-billion-dollar leisure facility that features Japan’s first correct on line casino. As if recognizing what an inconvenient time it will be for Sakata to snap out of his coma and begin murdering the folks whose blood cash paid for Sunohara’s monument of corruption, the gangsters present up at Sakata’s hospital room to complete what they began. Evidently, killing the man proves just a little bit harder than simply pulling the plug.
The scuffle that ensues finds “Demon Metropolis” at its scrappy and blood-soaked finest, as a dazed Ikuta flops across the hospital ground whereas repurposing his IV tube right into a lethal weapon. A couple of pictures of dodgy CGI aren’t sufficient to decrease the chaotic appeal of this mini-spectacle, which finds Tanaka flexing his muscle tissues as a superb director of close-up fight. All the time violent and sometimes a contact seedier than you would possibly anticipate from one thing with the standard Netflix sheen, the movie takes actual pleasure within the savage cruelty of its characters. And whereas that’s clearly mirrored within the struggle scenes (that are too good to be so few in quantity), it additionally bleeds into the in any other case generic story bits that pad out the film between them. No supporting character is protected from the Kimen-gumi’s attain, and even Sakata is glad to eradicate his outdated buddies and not using a second thought — which is simply as nicely in a movie whose plot would have all the form and endurance of unfastened sawdust if not for the brutality that binds it collectively.
It could be a spoiler to disclose the opposite respect during which “Demon Metropolis” goes out of its solution to invoke a sure ickiness, however Tanaka’s adaptation is so threadbare — and so half-committed to its personal lore — that nothing its characters are or do can meaningfully complicate the straightforward undeniable fact that they need to kill one another. That the film pauses in the course of its climactic brawl to unpack the ultimate boss’ soapy origin story betrays the failed intentions of a undertaking that hoped to create its personal “John Wick”-like mythos, and needed to accept its personal “John Wick”-like staircase shootout (which is clearly shot to appear to be a single take). Hack because it is perhaps to invoke “John Wick” as a substitute of the yakuza classics that “Demon Metropolis” cribs from, it’s clear that Netflix needed to fund a movie that had extra in widespread with Chad Stahelski than Kinji Fukasaku.
Then once more, hack because it is perhaps to stage one other digitally altered stairway oner, even that outdated trope is considerably revitalized by the ingenuity on show right here, simply because the struggle scene that follows invitations Sakata to weaponize a hearth extinguisher — among the many most typical motion film props — in a approach that I’ve by no means actually seen earlier than. It’s sufficient to make “Demon Metropolis” a nice place to spend 100 minutes of your time, however any curiosity in returning for an additional keep would depend upon Tanaka’s capability to discover a approach into this story, and never simply round it.
Grade: C+
“Demon Metropolis” is now streaming on Netflix.
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