Brief Story Line
Taro Sakamoto (Ren Meguro - As Long As We Both Shall Live, Trillion Game TV series etc) was a professional hitman and regarded as the best. But when he met and fell in love with a convenience store clerk named Aoi (Aya Ueto - The Silent Service TV series, Azumi etc), Sakamoto wanted to marry her. After convincing Aoi that he would never kill again, they finally got married and had a young daughter named Hana (Yoshimoto Miyu). As a retired hitman, Sakamoto now just watched over the convenience store with another clerk named Lu Xiaotang (Mayuu Yokota - Drawing Closer, Reborn TV series etc) but due to his current lifestyle, he had become overweight.
Unfortunately Sakamoto's peaceful days were ruined when the hitman organization somehow found him and a very large bounty was put on his head. Since then a lot of professional hitman began to come to the convenience store and tried to kill him. It started with Asakura Shin (Fumiya Takahashi - Extraordinary Attorney Minami TV series, Teasing Master Takagi-san etc) who actually idolized him. There was also the sniper Heisuke (Junki Tozuka - Brother, Sister TV series, My Crazy Feminist Girlfriend etc) who wanted to be the only one killing him, and many more. As Sakamoto only wanted to protect his family, he tried to find out who put the bounty and stop them.
So what would happen to Sakamoto? You could find out in this movie.
End of Brief Story Line
To be honest I never knew what the story of this movie about. I only found out when I read the brief synopsis which immediately made me interested. The premise of a retired professional hitman who became fat but still had to fight other hitmen sounded very fun. Plus I was very familiar with the title since it was one of the popular anime series on streaming service. I never did give the series a try as I was not aware of the plot. If I had known, I would gladly start watching it.
Anyway, after the opening scene that showed how amazing Taro Sakamoto was as a professional killer, the story quickly shifted its gear to the comedic style. The manga feel was very strong with the exaggerated expressions of the characters combined with some physic defying scenes that could only happen in this kind of movie. Since I am already accustomed to watching anime, it was not surprising for me to see such scenes, though people who are not familiar might feel it to be ridiculous. As the movie progressed, I felt the story was becoming more fun with many fighting sequence that were really entertaining. It was a joy to see the agility and atheticism of the characters in doing those fight scenes (some of them actually reminded me of watching John Wick movies).
The movie itself had a pretty long duration of 128 minutes including closing credits which was sufficient to cover the story and included the enjoyable fights. There was no post end credit scene but there were some scenes from the movie re-shown during the closing credits accompanied by its theme song titled "BANG!!" sung by J-pop group Snow Man. I said earlier that I never watched the anime before but after watching the film, I wanted to see just the first episode for comparison. And after watching that, I thought it was pretty loyal (some scenes were exactly the same) with the anime. However there were few things that were altered like the introduction of one character that was not done in the beginning or the specific characteristic of Sakamoto which was immediately shown in the movie but only latter in the series. Now since I only watched the first of 22 episodes in first season, I am very sure there would be other things differently done which is understandable cause we are talking about fitting them into 1 movie.
The characters appearances looked quite similar to the ones in the anime so had to applaud the make up department for their wonderful work. But the prosthetic body of Sakamoto even though looked similar to the manga/anime, they looked rather a bit unrealistic. However I guess it is better than using computer effects (this actually reminded me of Donnie Yen when he played in Enter the Fat Dragon). The movie itself was written and directed by Fukuda Yuichi (Once Upon a Crime, Under Ninja etc) and based on manga of the same title by Yoto Suzuki which was said to be getting to the final arc by end of this year. So it's good to know there would be an end in the near future of this story. Btw this movie was released in Japan on 29 April 2026 and it was cool of Prime Video to acquire the right and enable us here to watch it.
The cast did good job in portraying their characters particularly Ren Meguro who was able to do those anime expressions and Takahashi Fumiya who looked really great during the fight scenes. Other than the names above, there were three people who were shown during the opening credits whom I believe were part of main cast i.e. Yusei Yagi (Suspicious Partner TV series, Stella Next to Me etc) as Shishiba, Meru Nukumi (Viral Hit TV series, My Boyfriend in Orange etc) as Osaragi and Takumi Kitamura (Anti-hero TV series, Your Story etc) as Nagumo, all of whom were members of the Order, the elite division of Japanese Assassins organization. In addition there were also support cast like Shinya Kote (Faking Beethoven etc), Keisuke Watanabe (Until We Meet Again etc), Hinako Sakurai (Secret Unrequited Love TV series etc) as assassins Boiled, Seba and Obiguro respectively, Akihisa Shiono (Talentless Takano TV series etc) as Mr. Reindeer plus few others.
Overall this was an entertaining action movie. As it was a live action adaptation of manga, it has the obvious characteristics that I have no problem with. The action sequence were well executed and enjoyable to watch and the comedy was fun. Only thing that I thought could have been done better was the prosthetic body as they looked too obvious not real (especially in the face). Also I think watching the anime first (or reading the manga) would probably make this more fun (it is not available in Prime Video but in another streaming platform). So if you are OK watching the action comedy movie where some of the fights were really great combined with the anime style humor and few physics defying action (think of Stephen Chow's Kungfu Hustle), then I am sure you would enjoy this one like I did.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.75 out of 5 stars
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