![]() Maybe they get a better handle on their plot device in the second film. Still, all involved seem to think that’s enough to hang not one movie, but a sequel titled “A Hitman Who Doesn’t Kill” on. But the explanations - reduced lethality bullets and what not - are feeble. ![]() The complications are a damsel ( Mizuki Yamamoto) in distress, a mobster wanting to pimp her out, kidnappings and the threat of rape, all with poor Akira forced to handle the situation without actually killing anybody.Īs a gimmick, that’s kind of interesting. At speed, the killing is perfunctory, driven by a need to impress through sheer numbers.įlashbacks explaining how The Boss and The Fable met are unnecessary. ![]() He wades through foes in ways that are more impressive as you repeat-watch them in slow motion. The comedy is played broadly while the action beats have a methodical dullness about them. He dissolves into hysterics, something no one around him quite understands. Okada maintains a poker face for most of the movie, until those goofball commercials by the Jackal show up. And then there’s this contract killer ( Sôta Fukushi) out to find this “Fable,” and test himself against him in the midst of what could be a mob coup in the making.Īll the Fable, hiding under the name Akira with his hard-brawling, hard-drinking “sister,” wants is get a job and pretend to lead an ordinary life, with just enough mobsters knowing he’s there to prevent that. A mob-connected sociopath ( Yûya Yagira) is about to get out of jail and stir things up. That’s going to be tricky, as there are a lot of mob “problems” swirling around Director Ebihara ( Ken Yasuda). “No killing.” If he does, “I’ll kill you.” “Don’t you DARE get into trouble,” the boss who trained him warns. But as he is being put up by a mob ally, our hero will go as “a professional,” just not himself, the legend others call “The Fable.” They are to “blend in” as “ordinary” citizens, Boss instructs them (in Japanese with English subtitles). Our nameless mass murderer (“hundred of kills”) has just finished cleaning up “some trouble,” so his boss ( Kôichi Satô) sends him and his Tokyo driver-sidekick ( Fumino Kimura) off to Osaka to lay low. ![]() We are not that amused.īut the big set-pieces here are wowzers, good enough to merit a sequel (“The Fable: A Hitman Who Doesn’t Kill”), so let’s dive in. The long, somewhat sluggish comic thriller director Kan Eguchi gets out of this manga adaptation has scattered laughs and lots and lots of killing, much of that played as comedy, too. Call him “The Fable,” because this masked-murderer ( Jun’ichi Okada) might be just that, someone who doesn’t exist. We see graphics (a “Terminator” or Guy Ritchie’s “Sherlock Holmes” movies trick) of the targeted spot he wants to hit, the angle the bullet will travel and the many many variations of each shot he has to wade through in the blink of an eye. He’s unblinking, unflinching, and prone to doing everything around the house from computing to working out in the nude.Īnd as we’ve seen in the opening scene, a geisha restaurant slaughter, he’s a methodical hitman who does the calculus of a kill before he pulls the trigger. But he freaks out like a little boy if his food’s too hot. He’s tougher than tough, with the scars to show for it. Unless he’s replaying his favorite TV commercials starring the infantile comic “Jackal.” Those move him to hysterics. ![]()
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