Onigoroshi: Demon City

Demon City has many good elements in it. IT is a sleek Japanese action film based on the aged old martial arts revenge trope. The action, fighting, and violence are the strongest aspects of the movie. It has a sleek and cool look. The issue with it is that the backstory is too confusing and the relationships of the characters is also confusing. The elements that relate to the characters revenge against the people who wronged his family are the best parts but the main characters lack a certain depth and dimension. They do not provide enough gravitas to make it seem like they are just going through the motions. Could have been better.

In a down-on-its-luck port city the world's most skillful assassin does one last job before retiring to an idyllic life of ... just kidding, obviously; within 30 minutes of his retirement some bad guys set him on the path to a decade-spanning vendetta. The story is pretty goofy. The script can't seem to decide whether or not it wants to be taken seriously and/or how overt or illusory to make its supernatural implications. Important plot points are just retconned into existence via expositional dialogue or cutaway flashbacks.

But at least there's lots of violent bloody action and the antagonists rock some decent Oni masks. It's all style and no substance but enjoyable as over-the-top fun.

It had been a while since i watched a Japanese martial art movie, so as i saw this on Netflix and with the French dubbing nontheless, i sure gave it a shot.

The first issue i had was that the plot is barebone. The old classic of retiring hitman have to be taken out by former boss has been seen a million time sure, but normally you at least are given a reason to care for the character. Sure his familly is murdered but outside of that, you see so little of that guy and he pretty much have the personnality of a broom, so its hard to care.

As for the rest, well sure there is some decent action with no refrain on blood and violence, but its like the movie never decide what it want to be. Is he supernatural or just a man? Is this a serious revenge flick or its supose to be goofy (despite the violence). It never decide.

You really have to turn your brain off to enjoy it even middly. Personally i was never "bored" per say, but i rolled my eyes a few times. I would say its a 5.4 out of 10. So it get a 5 ultimately. Its average. Watchable, but its not one i will revisit.

Why ???? Like why ?.? Why would you try to recreate or give your Homage to these classic and fail so bad, so disappointed 😞 the climax was just meh. 1.5 hr of disappointment, no proper background story, few actor were good but not all, action sequences below MID. There was no build up for the villan too, If you still wanna watch this go ahead but don't have any high expectations, especially if you are a fan of classic likes John Wick, Kill Bill, The Crow.. This one was just bad. Didn't accept this from Toma Ikuta. Also the music was disappointing, the climax music was suppose to hype up the scene but just failed.

I really wanted to like this. First 15-20 minutes made me feel like it could be inspired by a mix of John Wick and The Crow (original). They raised the stakes by what happened to the protagonist but we never really get the payoff from the build up. He is inexplicably invincible, even when he wants you to believe he's hurt and sadly the villains never really die. Speaking of which, they are evil to the core but then they have little back stories to make it seem like they have some sort of honour. There are some cool action sequences, and performance around the Samurai culture but overall I found this movie weird and ultimately disappointing. I had to watch John Wick after to scratch the vengeance itch it gave me.