Everything appears peaceful in the town but evil lurks in the shadows. He lands his first-ever regular job at a graphic design office where his child-like drawings amuse his employer (Jiro Sato) and colleague, Misaki (Mizuki Yamamoto). One day his boss orders him to, "kill no one and live like a regular man for a year." Given a new identity as Akira Sato, Fable starts anew as "a regular man" with his partner Yoko (Fumino Kimura), who pretends to be his younger sister. The Fable (played by Junichi Okada) is a legendary hitman feared in the underworld. If Eguichi manages to maintain the intensity and fun of this sequel, then we’ll gladly welcome the Fable Cinematic Universe onto our screens.Give him 6 seconds and he could kill anyone. Indeed, judging from the final credits scene, there are plans afoot for a third outing in the franchise. While the film can be happily enjoyed as a separate entity to the original, it’s clear that knowing these characters is learning to love them. Kimura makes a decent case for her own spin-off series, while hapless co-workers Takoda (Jiro Sato) and Misaki (Mizuki Yamamoto) ground the whole affair in a comedic version of reality. The socially awkward Sato continues to evolve under Okada’s skilled range, once again adding layers through non-sequiturs and a pop-culture fuelled sense of humour. Yet the real joy is in watching this eclectic group interact. By contrast, the ultimate denouement is relatively low-key, with Eguichi sticking to the character focus right to the very end. There’s an explosive apartment scene, with a series of chases along scaffolding that mixes all the best bits of throwback Asian cinema and contemporary Hollywood. There are some amazing top-loaded sequences, including one that gives Fumino Kimura a chance to impressively kick some ass. In fact, the whole film’s structure seems to be geared a little differently this time around. This is an incredibly welcome development. Where the first film occasionally lost the balance between the intrinsic humour of the material and the set-piece action, Eguichi seems like he wants to get the big stuff out of the way so he can focus on the character based plotting. Opening with a massive car chase, one in which a vehicle goes careening off the top of a building, THE FABLE: THE KILLER WHO DOESN’T KILL (ザ・ファブル 殺さない殺し屋) wastes no time in establishing the parameters of its own scale. He’s right, of course: Utsubo works for rival contact killer Suzuki (Masanobu Ando) and is extorting their victims. Yet when non-profit worker Utsubo (Shinichi Tsutsumi) sets up shop, Sato suspects something is up. Akira Sato, the legendary altruistic killer known as Fable, now lives in relative peace with his partner Yoko (Fumino Kimura) as siblings. Building on Katsuhisa Minami’s manga of the same name, the offbeat 2019 film navigated several styles to worm its way into our hearts with its anti-hero and his band of regulars.ĭirector Kan Eguichi’s sequel confidently steps in as a ready-made and self-contained entity. The image of Junichi Okada’s titular hitman with a parrot perched on his head quickly worked its way into the hearts and minds of Japanese film lovers a few years ago. All the esoteric elements come together nicely, with some large scale set-pieces that are world class. One of those rare instances where the sequel outdoes the original.
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