‘Demon City’: Live-action manga adaptation is ultra-violent — and ultra-dull

Netflix has been on a hot streak with its original Japanese dramas recently, but its film offerings are less inspiring. After ho-hum efforts like “City Hunter” (2024), the streaming giant hits a nadir with “Demon City,” a joyless, weirdly anonymous adaptation of Masamichi Kawabe’s ultra-violent manga series, “Oni Goroshi.”

Toma Ikuta plays former hit man Shuhei Sakata, who wakes from a lengthy coma to exact vengeance against the masked criminals who betrayed him and murdered his family. Such behavior is par for the course in the film’s fictional Shinjo City, where legend tells of a demon that possesses someone every 50 years, sending them on a killing spree.

Shuhei already possesses the necessary skill set. We first see him brutally dispatching an entire yakuza clan, in what he believes will be his last job before he gets to settle down and become a family man. No prizes for guessing how that plan turns out. Shuhei has barely had a chance to shower before he sees his wife and daughter get gunned down by a gang of criminals wearing sinister noh theater masks.

Savor that stylistic touch: The film doesn’t have many more of them.

Twelve years later, Shuhei is released from custody in a vegetative state, but he gets roused to action when one of the masked villains returns to finish the job. In his absence, Shinjo City has been undergoing an extensive redevelopment, centering on a lucrative casino resort. Meanwhile, the crooks have taken over city hall, as personified by dastardly mayor Ryu Sunohara (Matsuya Onoe).

The city also appears to have become home to a slum with a sizable immigrant population, which is intriguing for all of the approximately two minutes the film spends there before heading to more generic locales. (The movie’s drab Nowheresville was mostly shot in Fukushima Prefecture.)

Ikuta showed a facility for grisly action in Nobuhiro Yamashita’s “Confession” (2024) and he brings an uncanny physicality to his fight scenes, giving Shuhei a zombie-like lurch as he moves from one adversary to the next. But this revenant on a rampage has all the personality of a video-game avatar. I’d stopped caring long before the film reached its climactic showdown. Masahiro Higashide, playing the masked gang’s most lascivious member, is one of the only people here who seems to be having any fun.

“Demon City” features some accomplished stunt work and fight choreography, albeit little that will have you reaching for the rewind button. Despite the occasional flashy move, the big set pieces don’t flow like they did in Kensuke Sonomura’s “Bad City” (2023) or Masato Harada’s “Hell Dogs” (2022). An extended stairwell sequence — practically a prerequisite in modern action movies — uses exaggerated camera movements to conceal the seams.

It’s hard not to feel sorry for director Seiji Tanaka, who was presumably hired on the strength of his inventive indie debut, “Melancholic” (2019), but has succeeded in creating a film that looks like it could have been made by anyone. Tanaka’s actual sophomore feature, “The Man Who Failed to Die,” opened in theaters last weekend and is a mixed bag, but it at least feels like the movie he wanted to make.

Relentless both in its violence and drudgery, “Demon City” is a film that would once have gone straight to DVD. On reflection, sinking to the bottom of Netflix’s content abyss might be a fitting fate.