Bad City (2022)

Bad City is from former stuntman Kensuke Sonomura so, as you would expect, it is filled with action, stunts and more…well, not quite, but there are plenty of fists flying!

The story, such that it matters with these things, is one of corruption as the Gojo corporation’s leader Wataru Gojo, Lily Franky (“Shoplifters”, “The Devil’s Path”), claims to want to bring prosperity to the city this all takes place in.

In reality all he wants is to make money from casinos but requires foreign investment in order to do that, though this is not allowed, so he decides to run for mayor, announcing his decision as he walks free from court having had his corruption allegations quashed.

In order to ‘get the bad guy’ a special task force is set up, division zero, which hardly anyone will know about. It will consist of three people from the violent crime division, plus Torada, Hitoshi Ozawa (“Bee Bop Highschool trilogy”, “Boiling Point”), a former captain who is now in jail accused of killing Madam’s, Rino Katase (“Tokyo Bordello”, “Kantsubaki”), son.

Madam is the head of the Korean mafia in the city and quite a flamboyant dresser and hater of Japanese, despite having a few in her employment, one of which is working for both sides of the bad parties.

Thrown into the mix is a cocktail stick chewing, never-speaking assassin, Tak Sakaguchi (“Prisoners Of The Ghostland”, “Red Blade”), who can dodge bullets and, even when he doesn’t, well, you’ll see.

The whole movie is basically quite bad dialogue, think early nineties martial arts movies, raw fist fights, with some baseball bats and knives and lots of people standing in a line, facing off against each other, with moody looks at the camera.

This doesn’t necessarily mean Bad City is bad, it does mean it’s not great. I like the rawness of the fights though; there’s not the usual ‘everyone knows martial arts’ you see in, well, most movies these days.

Rather the fights feel emotive, angry; punches are thrown, faces are raked, necks are grabbed, it looks like the actors have been told to just fight as you would in the street. In reality I imagine the fight choreographer deserves a medal for piecing it all together.

Bad City will be available from your usual digital places from the 6th march 2023.