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Light is a
teenage boy who hates criminals that only
get mild punishments, so when a book falls down from
the sky called "Death Note", he decides to take matter
into his own hands. See, if you write a name in the
death note, this person will die by your wish. So
together with the death god he starts killing people
under the nickname Kira. At the same time, a mysterious
person called "L" is trying to figure out who Kira is
together with a bunch of FBI agents. Will Light be able
to outsmart L and his team of agents, or will he end up
being punished for his punishments?
Death Note is not exactly a horror flick, but since
most horror movies these days are horrible (yes, being
a horror movie critic is sure sucking a lot these days),
every time I stumble onto a gem like this, I feel the
urge to spread my opinion. So here goes.
The movie revolves around a teenage boy called Light
(played by Battle Royale's Tatsuya Fujiwara) who is
studying to become a cop since he wants to follow in
his dads footsteps. But Light's view on justice is a
bit extreme. When he one day stumbles onto a book, well
it's more of a file actually, called the Death Note,
Light decides to punish criminals who he felt weren't
punished enough by the law. He meets the owner of the
file, the death god, who he quickly becomes friends
with. The movie then centres around Light trying to
outsmart the FBI and a mysterious person called L, and
man is it ever so exciting.
I haven't read the manga but ever since I saw Uzumaki
a couple of years back, I've had a soft spot for movies
based on mangas. And just like Uzumaki, Death Note is
odd, bizarre and extremely clever. The story is so
intriguing that the two hours go past way too fast,
I simply didn't want it to end. The fact that Light
even outsmarts the viewers was just brilliant. This
was almost up-to-par with Battle Royale (believe you
me, Battle Royale fans will dig this).
Speaking of which, Tatsuya Fujiwara gives us an
outstanding performance and despite an overall strong
cast, he still comes out on top. The death god, which
is by the way entirely made in CGI, also looks pretty
damn cool. Shusuke Kaneko does a stellar job behind
the camera but I kind of felt that the death scenes
were a bit too cheesy.
I don't really want to say a whole lot more than that
though since I don't want to ruin the movie for you.
Death Note is one of the best movies of the year and
I can't wait to see the sequel. This is Japanese
cinema at its very best and I highly recommend that
you check this one out - especially if you enjoyed
Battle Royale. It's not a pure horror movie, but I'm
pretty sure that horror fans will find this enjoyable
as well, I know I did.
Not a whole lot here.
Well, I'm sure that this works very well in Japan but
the rock music didn't really do it for me. The score
was all right but didn't have a big impact on the movie.
No wonder this was such a huge hit in Japan, Death
Note is one of the must-see's of the year. It's more
clever than Seven and Silence Of The Lambs combined
so you can not miss out on this one. If you enjoy
Japanese manga movies, I can promise you that you will
dig this one - check it out!
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