BAD CITY Review: A Taut, Thrilling Yakuza Crime Procedural Signals Kensuke Sonomura’s Best Film Yet

Stunt and action multi-hyphenate and filmmaker, Kensuke Sonomura, came down the straightaway and into global festival circuitry earlier this summer, lending first eyes to audiences at Neuchâtel earlier this year for his newest crime pic, Bad City. Signing off on Sonomura’s second feature action film following 2019’s pulsating assassin thriller, Hydra, is renowned actor Hitoshi Ozawa, whose favor with moviegoers extends as far back as the early 1990s with the birth of the V-Cinema era. Ozawa (credited as OZAWA accordingly) also gets top billing here as writer and executive producer on the new film, which also weighs heavily with a cast of notable actors, including a few fan favorites. To that end, Sonomura smartly foregoes some of the visual martial arts stylings as seen in Hydra, constructing action sequences that are much more grittier to suit Ozawa’s screen caliber, albeit peppered with equally impressive stunt coordination and fight choreography throughout from select cast.

Viewers get to see how it all plays out in Bad City, with the inaugural entry of a lone assassin entering a spa and killing his way through a couple of guards in the process. The incident offsets a bloody and gruesome investigation involving the murdered leader of the Sakurada crime organization and his missing severed hand, just as Wataru Gojo (Lily Franky), a seemingly untouchable corporate magnate, is escorted from jail after being acquitted of bribery and collusion charges moments before hitting the airwaves and announcing a mayoral run. Steadfast to put Gojo back behind bars along with his cronies and underworld cohorts, Kaiko City’s top prosecutor, Hirayama (Masaya Kato), assembles a completely autonomous special investigation unit of his own, hand-picking selections from the Violent Crimes Unit of the city’s beleagured police department, including the unit’s disgraced former Captain, Torada (Hitoshi Ozawa), who has long since been incarcerated for the alleged murder of the son of a South Korean Madam (Rino Katase).

Joined by V.C. Lieutenants Kumamoto (Hideto Katsuya), Nishikazi (Masanori Mimoto) and rookie Nohara (Akane Sakanoue), Torada consults with Koizumi (Mitsu Dan), former Violent Crimes unit member-turned-assistant prosecutor under Hirayama, to coordinate their investigation. The m.o.? To dig into Gojo and his possible connection with Kim Seung-gi (Yoshiyuki Yamaguchi), a cold-blooded South Korean mafia enforcer, involving a land development deal against which neighboring residents in the district have been protesting. As Torada and his team engage the Yakuzas looking to avenge the murder of their boss, the team finds itself swept into a deadly campaign of retribution by Kim and his henchmen, with the investigation extending deeper into Torada’s past than anyone could have suspected. Loyalties and alliances are questioned, more blood is spilled, and law enforcement neutered at the top as potential war between the Koreans and Japanese looms. With the help of Murata and his men, and a tenacious reporter named Mika (Arisa Matsunaga) looking to deliver her own brand of comeuppance, Torada and his unit must head up the dauntless task of taking the fight straight to the underworld, in a showdown of fisticuffs, bats, blades and all-out brute force, regardless of whether or not he ends up back in jail, or dies fighting.

Between the action and drama, choice casting additions bring ample substance and starpower to the Hydra director’s near-two hour crime thriller, with Ozawa at the tip of the spear in his latest and much more physical role following his recent appearance in 2019’s HiGH&LOW: The Worst. To this end, Ozawa brings a sincere and consistently steely air to his character, with a provenly visible ability to keep up with high-energy action sequences, right down to the gangbuster fight finale and exciting one-on-one match-ups alongside his co-stars. It also helps that Ozawa has gained experience on both sides of the lens, partly serving as the film’s screenwriter and delivering a largely solid, well-paced and balanced, and thoroughly entertaining crime procedural with plenty of action to sustain audience interest.

One of the things I enjoyed most has to do with the chemistry among Torada and his team in the first hour. There’s a bit of a family dynamic with Kumamoto and his big brother-like demeanor towards Nishikazi, along with their welcome of Nohara into their unit. Sentiment goes out the window for most of the time, but it doesn’t undercut their importance to one another and having each other’s backs when stuff is about to go down. Their first job together under the newly furloghed Torada finds them clashing with Yakuza enforcer Murata (Kazuki Namioka), and his riled-up hit squad army dressed in baseball outfits and armed with the usual non-lethal essentials, ensuing a three-on-many mass brawl with Torada armed with nothing more than a bullhorn and his own tenacious will. The scene also opens a small window into Nohara’s own ability to handle herself – given her small figure and unassuming appearance – which makes it an absolute treat watching her thrive in this film as an underdog to root for as she’s pretty much the only visible female scrapping with the boys. She’s a half-pint throwing down with three-to-four goons at a time during some of these action sequences and in keeping up with Sonomura’s action direction and coordination by Hydra cohort Naohiro Kawamoto, it’s a total treat to watch.

Other supporting characters to look forward include actress Matsunaga who gets to share a few scenes with Sakanoue, as well as Taro Suwa who appears as the station’s police Chief who begrudgingly agrees to lend Hirayama his three V.C. detectives at a crucial time when his station is short-staffed and he’s making developments of his own. Other character actors also include Kentarô Shimazu – who last appeared in Yoshihiro Nishimura’s The Ninja War of Torakage (2015) in which Mimoto also co-starred – who plays the questionably aggressive head of the station’s Fourth Investigation Division, and Baby Assassins co-star Yasukaze Motomiya who plays the Madam’s personal bodyguard (Motomiya is set to reunite this September with several of this film’s cast in Hiroyuki Tsuji’s Yakuza crime comedy, Yamazaki Ichimon: Unification Of Japan).

There’s definitely more to the story though, and the film explores that plentily as we follow Torada’s quest to make the wrong things right, both past and present, and it all culminates in an underlying arc later in the film that brings some much needed heart and poignance to Bad City, so it’s not all cops-versus-gangsters and mind-numbing beatdowns. There’s a reason for the fights and the violence, which therein brings us to the full-on carnage Sonomura delivers with Ozawa and our cast in great action cinema form. What’s more is if you take this and factor in the presence of Japanese genre favorite, Tak Sakaguchi who stars as Han, a lightining fast hitman and destroyer of bodies who takes on all comers, you’re bound for some excitement.

Interestingly enough, Bad City wasn’t supposed to be Sonomura’s next film after Hydra. As the pandemic set in around the world in the last few years, however, Sonomura found himself mitigating a suddenly new atmosphere, evidently doing so with an auspicious new action film that would partner him with a venerable regional film star. No matter how those events played out, the result has brought forth a fortuitous action drama production, shepherded by a hungry director who has cut his teeth in stunts and entertainment for nearly half of my lifetime, and is clearly adapting to the ubiquitous momentum that’s pushed him in the independent film arena with Hydra up to this point.

While still serving up the action behind the lens for other directors of late on projects like Yugo Sakamoto’s Baby Assassins, Chen Yin-Jung’s Taiwanese Netflix series, Nowhere Man, Taichi Suzuki’s I’m Glad To Be Alive and director Yudai Yamaguchi’s upcoming One Percenter, its great to know that Sonomura is living up to expectations in many facets of his craft. It shows in Bad City, a modest crime thriller that still flexes its best muscles, and succeeds in invoking Sonomura’s strengthening skills as a storyteller in various areas. With Bad City, Sonomura makes the message loud and clear that he is definitely someone who understands the assignment, and going forward, we would all be wise not to overlook him.

Bad City is currently set to screen for Fantastic Fest this September, and is slated for a preliminary screening in Fukuoka Prefecture on December 9, 2022, before releasing in Japan nationwide on January 20, 2023. Click here to visit the film’s official website.

Lee B. Golden III

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Native New Yorker. Been writing for a long time now, and I enjoy what I do. Be nice to me!