Saturday, June 30, 2007

Review: Death Note (live-action movie)

Summary
Alternative Titles: デスノート, Desu nôto
Genres: Mystery, Police, Supernatural
Release Date: Jun 17, 06
Starring: Fujiwara Tatsuya as Kira, Matsuyama Ken'ichi as L

Yagami Light is a student who does very well in school and has a good family. One day, he finds a black book with the words Death Note on it. The Death Note contains a set of instructions for the user of the book. The first rule Light reads is that if he writes anyone's name on the book, then that person will die. At first, Light doesn't believe in the Death Note, but after he tries it out, the Death Note does what it's suppose to. Light gets very ambitious and decides to use the Death Note to get rid of all the criminals in the world. Light doesn't reveal his true identity and the world creates the nickname "Kira" for Light ("Kira" means killer in Japanese). To combat "Kira", a world-renowned detective named "L" starts to investigate. Like "Kira", no one knows the true identity of "L".

Review
For those who have watched the first few episodes episodes of the anime, then you'll know what will happen through most of the movie. The live-action adaptation of the Death Note manga and anime has the same excellent plot as the manga and anime counterparts, but it lacks in basically everything else, most notably the horrible acting by some of the minor characters. Since I watched the Death Note anime, I thought that the Death Note movie would have been much better if it was more different from the anime.


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Pros

  • Most of the actors resemble their anime counterparts.
  • Acting by the major characters are good.
  • The Story is very interesting.
Cons
  • Acting by most of the minor character are horrible.
  • There are some parts were very slow-paced and boring.
  • The cop named Matsuda is very annoying.
  • CGI is terrible compared to what you see in Hollywood movies.
?Perplexing?: Why does the Red Hot Chilling Peppers sing the theme song?

Recommendation
If you watched the Death Note anime, then ignore the movie and keep on watching the anime.
If you didn't watch the anime, then watch it instead on the movie.

Rating: 7.8/10

Stay tuned!! I plan to review the second movie: Death Note: The Last Name

4 comments:

Anonymous July 2, 2007 at 1:07 a.m.  

Looks very interesting!! :D

Anonymous July 6, 2007 at 11:39 a.m.  

I've watched the 2nd movie before I watched the first movie, and also before I tried watching the anime, so I found the movie to be very interesting from start to finish :D

And now after I know the ending in the anime, I find that I prefer the ending in the 2nd movie.

Anonymous May 15, 2009 at 6:11 a.m.  

I have only read the books, and my #1 complaint about this movie is that Light loook nothing like the books. Also, L's hair needs spiking and the circles under his eyes should be more pronounced. The plot was okay, I loved the tension-filled ending. That does not happen in the books. L's electronic voice was cool.

(What was up with Ryuk? Not even the smallest budget movie should have to suffer such obvious computer generation.)

Anonymous December 26, 2009 at 8:53 a.m.  

i agree with haseo u review sucks man, all the points that u r analizing are not so important:

"the cop named matsuda is very annoying"

oh cmon ¡¡ that is the idea ¡

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