The lone warrior archetype is a recurrent figure in Japanese mythology and folklore— broken, violent persons spending their life in darkness, trying to turn a new page and redeem themselves, only to have fate plunge them into the same dark depths—it makes for an intriguing setup. Through the years, numerous literary and media formats have experimented with this setup with different combinations of visual and narrative style, and in that regard, Seiji Tanaka’s Japanese action thriller, Demon City, which follows the said form, has nothing exceptional to offer. You can identify the inspirations taken from classic Japanese revenge sagas and the John Wick series of movies—but the depth you’d expect from such a narrative treatment is strangely missing—which turns the movie itself into a brilliantly choreographed action sequence montage. The movie definitely had the potential to be a much more stylish, gritty, pulp-noir spectacle—which...