But … but … but he does kill. In fact, I find the this whole titular appendage confusing and a little insulting. Can you think of a situation where someone wouldn’t be a little miffed when described in these terms, say “a comedian who doesn’t tell jokes”, “a receiver who doesn’t catch”, or “a critic who doesn’t review.” I’m trying to come up with a scenario by which a subject wouldn’t be at least a little perturbed by such a description and I’m not finding any. My imagination must be on the fritz.
Akira (Junichi Okada) is sort of an underworld boogeyman. In certain circles, he’s known as The Fable, which –admittedly- is as cool a nickname as I could ever imagine. If you didn’t know, you’d never guess this guy is anything more than your below-average working schlub. At Octopus, a design company, he’s little more than an errand boy. He shows up at work lookin’ like Skylar Astin from Pitch Perfect, and his labor skillz are elementary-level pathetic. However, he has the ability to neutralize an armed opponent in seconds. With precision.
The schtick is that Akira has a past and he has come to honor it by honoring life. We don’t know exactly what his past is, but I’m guessing once upon a time he was a killer. Period.
We get the idea that right at this moment our parrot-lovin’ nobody doesn’t actually want to kill anybody despite an awesome lethal skill set and his constantly running afoul with assassins. Doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen; there are simply too many weapons and too few ways to stay alive without putting at least a few guys underground, but otherwise Akira tends to play more defense than offense, especially as he 
becomes a guardian. So this action movie has plenty of guns and explosives and chases, but a surprisingly small body count despite all the death merchant professionals on screen.
Oh, and The Fable: The Killer Who Doesn’t Kill can be a decidedly awesome action film. Two sequences stand out especially – the opening of the film in which our hero has to protect and unconscious woman in a speeding SUV in a crowded parking lot while remaining outside the car and the second (my favorite action scene of the year) in which a team of assassins use a five-story scaffolding to attack our The Fable. Both of those scenes would not have been out-of-place in any James Bond film and were better than most Bond stunts at that.
The film had a sense of humor as well, which is good because badasses without a sense of humor are, in a word, lame … and belong to an era where vigilantism always came with a straight face. The worst part of this film is simply the consistent feel that we’ve walked in late. Is this a sequel? Was there an original I should have seen? I mean, I’ll see it, sure. But don’t make me guess whether or not I should know more about our hero; that doesn’t make any sense.
An assassin who charged for his skill
Felt remorse after an unseemly kill
Left without voice
He withdrew the invoice
And became the biller who didn’t bill
Not Rated, 133 Minutes
Director: Kan Eguchi
Writer: Kan Eguchi, Masahiro Yamaura
Genre: The drama left un-drama’ed
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: The watchers who don’t watch
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: The haters who don’t hate
