Film review: Death Note

Tagline

The human whose name is written in this note shall die.

plot

Only a Shinigami, a death god, posses what is known as a Death Note. This notebook is what they use to cause our death. All they have to do is write a name, with the face in mind as well as to kill only a specific person. Either they write out how we die, or they leave just a name and allow us to die of a heart attack. Sometimes they do it for fun, sometimes they do it because they know our time is up. Only they can know such information. Despite this fact of them being the only ones to posses the notebook, there will be a time when one gets away and falls into the hands of a human in our world.

Light Yagami aspires to get into law school. The only problem is that he’s coming to realize just how poorly the justice works at persecuting criminals. Then he finds a notebook on the ground. A Death Note. What power he finds with it he could never imagine. And with it, he decides it’s time to bring justice to the world in his own way: by killing criminals. But not everyone in the world agrees that killing criminals randomly is right. They believe it’s still murder. So the police force brings in a well known detective known only as L to help find the killer, who is now being called Kira by his followers. L will stop at nothing to find Kira. And Kira is not your ordinary criminal. Let the games begin in this live action version of the well known anime!

Acting

Ken'ichi Matsuyama was the only actor to really hit a high mark with me. He definitely had L’s mannerisms down wonderfully. The childlike nature with the brilliant mind. He even looked almost exactly like the anime version of L with tousled dark hair and dark circled eyes from very little sleep. Made me happy to see my favourite sweets loving character was kept the same. Tatsuya Fujiwara did an alright job as Light. But I felt there was a little something missing. Perhaps a more sinister side behind the scenes of his everyday personality would have been cool to see. In the anime, Light was somewhat evil when he was on his own with nobody around. My other favourite character in this movie, and the anime, was Ryuk the Shinigami who follows Light around. The computer graphic they used for him was brilliant! He looked almost real and the voice actor was the same for both the movie and the anime, at least for the English voice over it was. Overall the acting was pretty good for everyone involved.

Verdict: I enjoyed this movie. Too bad it was only shown in theatres for two days here in the USA. Once it’s on DVD I would recommend all fans of the anime to check it out. And if you like a good movie that gets your mind working with all the twists it throws, then watch this movie. It’s not as good as the anime in my opinion, but it was well done anyways.

Jess