The Fable is a film that shouldn't work. An action-comedy based on a successful Manga series, it revolves around Akira Sato (Jun'ichi Okada), a hitman who finds himself on an unexpected holiday after his latest job. Ordered to lie low, his boss gives him strict instructions not to kill anyone for a year and try his best to live a normal life. Unfortunately, that's easier said than done with two rival assassins looking to take him out, not to mention an ambitious young gangster attempting to start a gang war. It's also not helped by the fact Sato had an...unconventional upbringing at best and isn't really sure how to behave around regular people.
The end result is a film that's very silly, delighting in scenes of a stone-faced killer struggling to socialise with his new co-workers and avoid blowing his cover. Okada's deadpan performance is great, watching him work out how to eat fish in public and delighting in the antics of a childish comedian raises a few laughs and the film is consistently entertaining.
The comedy however is noticeably at odds with the violence. The opening gun battle is a blood-splattered introduction and there's a fast-paced brawl in a factory towards the end which is wildly impressive. The psychotic villains and references to sex trafficking also mean The Fable is only a whisker away from being a very dark film indeed. Sato's social awkwardness is endearing, but when he's blowing holes in torsos and gunning down gangsters en masse, he's borderline inhuman.
The two styles shouldn't mesh but strangely, they do. The Fable winds up being surprisingly enjoyable. It isn't as funny as it wants to be and it definitely handles the action better than the comedy, but for a good seventy percent of the run time, it's a blast.
