Death Note – Live-Action Version of the Popular Manga

Once upon a time there was a little eight-volume Japanese manga that was very popular. It was so popular in fact that the powers that be decided there should be a live-action version (and a sequel) of it. And thus it came to be so.
The end? Oh, contraire, my friends. DEATH NOTE (DESU NOTO) made a very solid $22,000,000 at the Japanese box-office and its sequel, DEATH NOTE 2, made an even heftier $41,000,000. Then there was the little spin-off called L: CHANGE THE WORLD (directed by Hideo Nakata, who directed the original RINGU and the U.S.’s THE RING 2), which grossed $29,000,000. These dollar amounts may not seem all that huge in comparison to U.S. box-office figures, but they’re mighty big in Japan. DEATH NOTE and DEATH NOTE 2 were numbers 17 and 10 respectably at the Japanese box-office in 2006 and L is number 3 in 2008 at the time of this writing.
The end? Um, not quite. You see, those three films were produced by the Japan division of Warner Brothers Studios, so naturally the U.S. division wants to remake the films for Western audiences. Therefore, to seemingly pave the way a tad, WB released DEATH NOTE for a special two day engagement last weekend at various theaters here in the states. They also showed a little making-of film after the main attraction.
The plot is straight forward enough in its simplicity and goes thusly: There is an inter-dimensional life form out there known as the Shinigami (which means death in English), and they make available to those of their choosing a little notebook that when used to write someone’s name in—you guessed it—sends that poor soul to his or her maker.

Along comes a nice young lad named Light, who wishes to follow in his father’s footsteps (dad’s a police detective) and bring society’s criminal types to justice. After he has a brush with some punks, a member of the Shinigami sees fit to bestow the special notebook upon him. Light (not too badly portrayed by Tatsuya Fujiwara) starts out wanting no more than proper justice, but, as you might also guess, absolute power corrupts absolutely, and he begins using the notebook to off anyone he thinks gives him reason. To drive his changing view home to us we get to see him reading Nietzsche’s “Beyond Good and Evil.” Anyway, he’s doing all this in secret, and the Japanese populace dubs the mystery executioner as Kira (the letter ‘L’ doesn’t exist in their language, so Kira is evidently meant to approximate the word killer in English) . Soon a special genius is brought in to try to determine who this monstrous murderer is, and a battle of wits ensues. Will Light—yes, his English language name—become “the God of the New World?”
Now, I’m not gonna mince words here. The plot plays out pretty much like a Japanese monster movie from the ’60s. But that’s not necessarily bad, because it’s also imbued with the same sort of fun and charm. I found it to be the kind of movie that might be a hoot to watch during a slumber party. You know, the type you can laugh at and with at the same time. Some of the scenes are rather clever and some are just plain corny. But then there’s that spirit of fun and charm. I have to admit that I kind of enjoyed the thing. And yep, I do want to see the sequel. I even kinda smiled at the Shinigami CGI effects. They were a little creaky given what can be done now days, but what the heck, Japanese monster movies seemingly haven’t progressed too much beyond the traditional man-in-a-rubber-suit technique, so DEATH NOTE’s in good company as far as I’m concerned.
There’s something else I found kinda cute and charming, which I can’t help but mention: at a dinner table scene with Light and the rest of his family, I could swear that Light’s sister (Hikari Mitsushima), with her lips pursed and eyes wide open in that puppy dog style, looked just like Drew Barrymore did in the dinner table scene in E.T. I kept expecting her to pop up and say “alligators in the sewers.”
Watching the film, I understood what was being put forth, but I was not sure how seriously to take the drama. However, when the director (Shusuke Kaneko – who gave us three Gamera films in the 1990’s) talked about making the film, he seemed deadly serious. I almost felt guilty about chuckling throughout. If anything was supposed to be frightening it snuck right past me. Oh, wait a minute, there was something truly frightening in the film and it was any scene in which Light’s mom showed up. Now she was scary! (No, I don’t mean scary looking, but if you see the film you’ll know what I’m talking about.) Ah, yes, and L (as played by Kenichi Matsuyama) is a bit of a screwy, creepy character too; amusing, but a weirdo.
Like a lot of horror films, this one’s got some holes in it big enough to drive a truck through. For instance, the Shinigami apparently gain life force from the emotion caused by deaths involving the special notebook they provide, but this is only brought up in passing and is never alluded to again. Ryuk, the resident Shinigami life form in the film, also weakly tries to persuade Light to “sell” half of his lifespan to learn of certain future events. However, when Light says no Ryuk simply drops the issue, never to raise it again. Ryuk also questions the morality of what Light is doing when he starts using the notebook on innocents.

Hold on, I thought the Shinigami thrived on the power absorbed from these DEATH NOTE killings. Then what’s with the questioning? Why doesn’t Ryuk encourage Light when it comes to killing? Does Ryuk’s mere presence push the lad into the dark side? If so, we don’t get any true sense of that in the film. So what’s he hanging around for? Surely not just for apples – the Shinigami love ‘em. The logic of the film is quite suspect at times and the exposition gets pretty goofy, but hey, isn’t that the kind of stuff we’ve come to know and love about these types of Japanese genre films?
If you grew up on the type of Japanese fare I did, and if you enjoy Japanese manga, check it out when you get the chance. The U.S. DVD release is slated for 09/16/08.

DEATH NOTE (2006). Written by Tsugumi Oba and Takeshi Obata, based on the Japanese Manga series. Directed by Shusuke Kaneko. Cast: Tatsuya Fujiwara, Kenichi Matsuyama, Asaka Seto, Shigeki Hosokawa, Erika Toda, Shunji Fujimura, Takashi Kaga, Yu Kashii, Hikari Mitsushima, Masahiko Tsugawa.