My Thoughts on: Death Note デスノート (2006)

I started to take a deeper look into Japanese cinema back in 2006, and around this time I kept hearing all this hype about an Anime called Death Note. I avoided it, in the fear that the hype had set my expectations too high. A couple years later and after being pressured into watching it, I finally sat down and watched Death Note in it's entirety. Not only did it live up to the hype, it surpassed it. It was clever, tense, and engaging. I still use this as a example on how to write compelling characters, and an interesting story. I loved the Anime so much that I engolf myself in anything to do with Death Note, I brought and read the Manga, read the One-shots, and research the authors to death.

During this time I heard that their was a series of live action adaption based on the Manga, directed by Shūsuke Kaneko (金子 修介) who directed some of my favourite films such as Gamera reboot; Gamera: Guardian of the Universe (ガメラ 大怪獣空中決戦), Gamera 2: Attack of Legion (ガメラ2 レギオン襲来), Gamera 3: Awakening of Irys (ガメラ3 邪神〈イリス〉覚醒). But there was there was nothign but negative comments surrounding the films, how bad could they be?

OK. On a side-note I'm review the film based on it's own merits but I will be comparing the film to the Anime since they are both visual based mediums and not the Manga. Although the Manga is just as good as the Anime and the same goes for the Manga.

I want to start off by saying that the film isn't that bad on it's own merit but if your going to compare the film to the Anime then the film does fail to impress but I'll get on to that in greater detail later.

The story follow Light Yagami, an university student, who finds a notebook called the Death Note. The Death Note contains the power to kill anyone whose name is written within the book, as long as the user writes the name of the person the user wished to die while picturing their face. Light uses this new found power to "cleanse the world" by wiping out all the low life criminals & proclaim himself as the "God of the new world" that he is trying to create. After a few months the police start to investigate into the deaths they hire the help of the worlds greats detective, L, from here the story follows a cat and mouse of Light and L as they try to work out who each other real identity.

The film follows the original source martial to the best of it's abilities and does a good job of reacting some of the most remember-able scenes from Anime. For some reason the film does trails off the original source martial by introducing new events in the story, while the story reaches, near enough, the same conclusion in the Anime the means as watch they get there isn't as interesting. Film the throws this weird ending that completely skips over a key character arc from the original Anime that shows how Light acted in tough situations, and instead throws a ending that dumbs down the creative genius of the main character. While I will give the film credit for trying to show a more evil side to Light.

For the most part the cast is decent and all do a go job of playing these iconic characters but for the most part the acting is sometimes stiff. Most notable of this is Tatsuya Fujiwara (藤原 竜也), who plays Light Yagami, and Takeshi Kaga (鹿賀 丈史) who plays Lights father, Soichiro Yagami. One of the stronger deliveries comes from Kenichi Matsuyama (松山 ケンイチ) as L, who does a really good job of bring one of the most well develop characters from the Anime to life. Kenichi gets everyone of L's quirks spot-on, from sitting on a chair to how he answers a phone, and is one of the strongest rolls in the film.

I know this won't be a big surprise but the special effects are really bad and almost cheesy at times. Don't get me wrong there aren't that many effects in this movie but for the handful there are, they just look bad. The effect they choose to show when a character is having a heart-attack from the Death Note is pretty boring and forgettable. Some of the other effects are just awful to look at in true Japanese style.

A small criticism at best but is still worth a mention, is Ryuk's 3D model. While the model its self is fine and sticks to Ryuk's original design for the Manga, the textures are so flat and look almost cartoon-like, in contrast to the other actors on set is really noticeable. Every time Ryuk was on screen I always seemed to pulled out of the immersion of the film.

Overall... Wait I forgot the wiredest criticism of the whole package. Throughout the film has an original score written by Kenji Kawai (川井 憲次), who wrote the score for the original Ghost in the Shell and Ghost in the Shell: Innocence, but for some reason Red Hot Chili Pepper's Dani California is both the song that plays through DVD menu and credits. While theirs nothing wrong with this it's just out of place.

The song is even in the trailer and that just makes the song stick out more in amongst Kenji's score. The inclusion of the song makes the DVD release feel like someone in distribution need something to relate to Western culture and just slap the biggest music release at the time on the box... I could be wrong... Maybe Red Hot Chili Peppers are big fans of Death Note, I don't know...

Overall as I said before the film on its own merits stands up pretty well but in comparison to the other adaptions it fails to impress. I find it really hard to recommend this film. On one hand if you were to just come across this film without any knowledge of the Manga or Anime, the film is a enjoyable watch with an interesting permise. If you are interested in this film and haven't read the Manga or Anime I can't recommend it enough. But if your already a fan of Death Note then I can only recommend this film to you if your willing to over look the slight deviants to the story, bad special effects, and some stiff acting.