Bullet Points: Demon City (2025)
It is time to take another trip overseas courtesy of Netflix. This time it is the country of Japan for 2025’s Demon City…
- Enter the Assassin: We are introduced to assassin Shûhei Sakata (Tôma Ikuta) as he sharpens his blade, pops on his leather jacket and hops in his badass ride… it’s time to go to work! Sakata makes his way to the home of a Yakuza boss, who believes he is untouchable, but he won’t be of that belief for long. After receiving some bad news from one his underlings, the Yakuza boss starts seeing his security dropping like flies. Multiple escape attempts are thwarted by Sakata, who even manages to cut a guys arm off at the wrist. Sakata then makes his way to the Yakuza boss’ bedroom, tricking the boss into emptying his gun! With no bullets left the boss has nothing left to do but beg for his life… but Sakata has a task to complete.
- This Won’t End Well: It turns out that tonight was Sakata’s last night as an assassin. Sakata says goodbye to his friend, Fujita, and then heads home to his wife and his young daughter, Ryo. Sakata tells his wife it’s all done and that he’ll start looking for a new job. Sakata’s wife is relieved, she tells Sakata that this is cause for celebration… but first Sakata needs to clean up. At this point, I knew Sakata’s plan to start a new career and be a family man was going to be destroyed at some point… I had no idea it would be that night! As Sakata is getting dressed after his shower, he hears Ryo scream for someone to get out… when he goes out to the living room, there are unwelcome guests, all wearing masks… the ring leader of this group, known as the Kimen-gumi, thanks Sakata for eliminating their competition, then proceeds to have his men beat the crap out of Sakata. Deeds not words. Sakata’s new life is over before it even started, Sakata’s wife is shot in the head, when they threaten to do the same to Ryo, Sakata causes a distraction and tells Ryo to run… but the bastards shoot Ryo too. Then they shoot Sakata in the head too! And this all happened in the first 15 minutes of the movie!
- 12 Years Later: After the opening credits, the movie jumps ahead 12 years… we find out that Sakata didn’t die that night he was shot in the head, but he has spent most of the past 12 years in a coma. The Sakata that came out of the coma is a shell of his former self, he’s a drooling wheelchair bound vegetable… a far cry from the badass we saw at the start of the film. But remember the guy that lost a chunk of his arm thanks to Sakata?!?! The one armed man did, and he ends up attacking Sakata while he is out with his caretaker. Sakata is admitted into the hospital with a stab wound. That’s about the time Sakata gets a visitor in the form of one of the masked men from 12 years earlier, who is looking to finish the job and ends up waking up a demon!
- The Demon is Back: Sakata, who is still not 100% physically goes into full on revenge mode at this point and the action, the violence and the blood becomes almost non-stop. But it’s not just the body count that grows, the intrigue does as well, as Demon City has a few twists and turns up its sleeve, which makes for a rollercoaster of a third act!
Demon City is a glorious gorefest and an early contender for Action Movie of the Year! Demon City hits hard… you can feel the brutality radiating off the screen as Sakata goes on a killing spree for the ages. When you watch as many movies as I do in a given month, it’s easy for many of them to become a blur…. but Demon City is going to stick with me for a very long time.
