Parents' Guide to Demon City

Unfortunately, this movie is a bit of a mess. In terms of genre, Demon City is very straightforward and uncomplicated. The action and violence are abundant, but there's not much creativity or ingenuity in Takashi Tanimoto's fight choreography (City Hunter, Alice in Borderland). There's clearly an intentionality to the messiness of the fighting, which does bring to mind the kind of sloppy fight choreography made famous by Park Chan-wook's Old Boy hallway sequence. But for some reason (perhaps to better align with the manga) the violence in Demon City is also splashy, bloody, and almost video game-like in its over-the-top presentation, not ever really going for any kind of realism. Even if this extravagance fits better thematically (with the protagonist kind of mythically rising from paralysis with superhuman ability), it nevertheless quickly renders the violence kind of boring by flattening it out into a sea of splashy and bloody action.

Lead Tôma Ikuta does his best to provide an adequately stoic performance, especially given that he has very few lines the entire film. He's a silent, blank-slate hero, and while this can be intriguing at first, the gimmick quickly gets old. Despite Ikuta's best efforts, Sakata does not develop in any interesting way; he never goes anywhere, really. He fights and fights, kills and kills, and will eventually even likely overcome all enemies to achieve his goal, but his character still doesn't develop or go anywhere. And some kind of mention should go to the villain and his followers, who offer at least initially some kind of mystery (with the masks), only to then almost immediately reveal who they are. These villains are violent and cruel, but outside of the boss, the characters are a bit wasted. But perhaps these examples of a lack of depth are fine, because maybe this movie was never trying to be something more than it is, which is simply a somewhat conventional vehicle for a bunch of absurdly violent action sequences.