デスノート/ Death Note

(Movie Review)

This movie was the big blockbuster last summer in Japan. I usually try and stay away from big Japanese films, because I've been burned before. (At their worst, they are like bad Hollywood films minus the snazzy special effects). But a couple of friends were telling me about the premise for this movie, and it actually sounded pretty cool, so I decided to check it out.

Like most Japanese cinema, this film followed the standard route by starting out as a manga, then an anime series, and then finally made the transition to the big screen.

The story is based loosely on the Japanese mythological death gods, who keep death notebooks in which they write down the names of people destined to die.

In this story, one of the death gods throws down his notebook from heaven, where it is picked up by a precocious teenager Light Yagami. Once he figures out what he has in his hands, Light starts using the notebook to kill off all the criminals and other undesirable elements from society.

Meanwhile the Japanese police notice notice that gangsters are dying off in mysterious ways and try to find out what is happening. To aid them, they enlist the help of "L", another teenage genius (did I mention this was based on a comic book). And thus begins the battle of wits between L and Light.

It turns out this movie is the Japanese version of "Kill Bill" in the sense that one story was divided into two different movies. So after the first movie ended, the story is still a long way from concluding and it looks like I'm going to have make a second trip back to the video store to find out how everything will end. Knowing only half the story, it feels like I've only watched half a movie so far, but I will try and jot down a few thoughts nonetheless.

Although I've neither read the manga nor watched the anime, I suspect this is probably one of those stories that was better in the original format. There's a high body count in this movie, but most of the deaths are mysterious heart attacks caused by the death note, and so its not the kind of story that lends itself to a lot of action, explosions, and high speed chases.

Instead its more of a suspense movie, but unfortunately the director is no Alfred Hitchcock, and the tension is never as tight as it could be.

Also given the plot you might expect the movie to get into the moral issues between vigilante justice and whether the world would truly be a better place if we could just kill off all the bad apples. But again, the issue is only slightly touched.

I suppose I don't need to tell you that as Light continues to use the notebook his moral standards begin to slip. (If you're at all familiar with these kind of movies, you can see that a long way off). But an in depth look at what causes this shift is never provided. A better movie exploring some of these same themes might be "The Last Supper" (1995) although even that film slips into the obvious a bit. In both films it turns out (surprise) that taking justice into your own hands and killing off whoever you like is not a good idea. Phew, I'm glad we got that complicated moral problem solved.

Again I suspect this story line might have worked better in the comic or animation form, because given the nature of comic book stories we tend to suspend a lot more of our critical facilities when reading them. Once the story becomes live action and life like, you start to realize just how ridiculous a lot of the story is.

For example: just how many criminals who escaped justice are there wandering around the streets of Japan? I mean I know the Japanese Yakuza is famous for being outside the law, and I know Japanese courts can be famous for letting people off the hooks on technicalities (witness the Lucie Blackman case), but after a couple weeks of killing, you would think Light would run out of victims (especially since it appears he gets almost all of his names from the news).

And once L starts closing in on Light, Light does not stop his killing spree but goes through enormous difficulties to be able to escape L's detection and continue killing. Again, that might work in a comic book, but I had trouble believing a real live teenager would continue that obsession so far. (I know I certainly wouldn't, but maybe that's just me. It's a good thing I was never blessed with any evil genius, because I would be the world's laziest supervillian ever).

Well, regardless of the flaws in this movie, now that I've sunk in over two hours on the first one, I might as well go out and rent the second one to find out how it ends. I'll keep you updated.

This video is probably hard to find back in the U.S., but for anyone who isn't too concerned about intellectual copyright laws, I did find this copy online complete with English subtitles. (Sigh, I spend way too much time on the internet).

Update: March 31, 2009:

I also posted this review on Amazon.com (for a while I had a habit of reposting my blog reviews on Amazon, just to give more people the benefit of my wisdom.) It provoked a surprising amount of strong feelings, which I thought I'd copy and paste here just for fun.

Woopak says:
You are entitled to your opinion. Quite frankly, I don't agree with your view of the film. Aside from your view of vigitilantism, it deals with the issue of near-limitless power in matters of life and death. Death Note reflects on how power can corrupt a human mind. The human mind is unpredictable, how would you know how a live college student would react? Light was in Law school, not a teen-ager! In Asia, when you're in law school, means you are over 22 yrs. old. Plus, you took the film too seriously. This is a supernatural fantasy. Hey, Pirates of the Caribbean was a fantasy, and you didn't get all analytical with that. You want to watch Foreign films, learn to approach it with more acceptance and always put in consideration the source material.I thought it was well-done. I liked the way it dealt with the battle of wits between good and evil. Sorry, I definitely do not agree with your rating in your review and your understanding of the film. DEATH NOTE kicked the heck out of most Hollywood thrillers...!
Neil Ford says:
Most Japanese cinema does NOT start out as manga!

Woopak says:
I agree with Neil Ford. Don't underestimate Japanese cinema. It has influenced a lot more films made in Hollywood than you'd think. (Example: Kill Bill, The Matrix, The man with no name trilogy(spaghetti westerns), Magnificent Seven)As with super-hero films (like Spider-man), manga just moves on to another medium such as film.

Advo Asks says:
Awful review... lemme tell you why...

Teenager? Like someone already said, Light is studying Law in Uni. Of course, the anime DOES start with Light as a senior in high school, but we're not reviewing the anime here, and even if we were... This isn't just some green kid picking up something he can't understand. It's the (precocious, as the author already stated) son of a well-respected, highly ranked member of the police force... the top of his class, studying relentlessly to fulfill his already strong dream of delivering justice to the wicked. A genius with high expectations of himself, who is disgusted with the state of the world's rotting virtues.

So with that in mind... say again how it's difficult to imagine that he would actually take on the responsibility of ridding the world of scum? Besides, much of the reason that Light doesn't stop killing is that he CAN'T stop killing without increasing suspicion. Continuing the spree of murders is a way for him to continue his important work, sure, but if he can continue killing while appearing innocent, that should lead suspicion elsewhere. So for him, there is no choice BUT to keep killing. [This intention is present in the film, but probably more evident in the anime.]

(By the way, there is no evidence to support that L is supposed to be a teenager either.)

The complaint that real life would provide fewer criminals to kill is way off. Certainly Light goes after unpunished criminals, but he also attacks those who have already been incarcerated... and given the many millions of prisoners around the world... he would't run out of victims for ages.

The author is certainly right that the story was better in anime format (I don't read comics, so I can't speak for the manga), which I will discuss at some length in a review I'll be writing shortly. Unfortunately, this film wasn't great, but I think so for reasons other than Swagman. His review was written with a minimal amount of understanding of Japanese cinema (see review's first sentence), incorrect interpretations of the film's facts and implications, and a ridiculous amount of prejudice and inappropriate comparisons (hitchcock, kill bill, .the last supper). "Was this review helpful to you?"... No, not at all.

I probably should have just ignored all this, but for better or for worse one afternoon when I didn't have enought to do I wrote a long defense of my review, and pasted it after their comments:

Dear Woopak, Neil Ford, and Advo Ask,
thank you for taking the time to read my review, and giving me your feedback. It has also been interesting to read some of your thoughts on this movie over the last few months. When I posted this review a few months ago, it was the only one. Having read your reviews has helped me to understand this movie a little better, and I probably would have written this review a bit differently if I had read yours first.

We might have to agree to disagree on some of the thematic issues of this film, but I'll start with some of your more concrete objections first of all.
1) Most Japanese cinema does not start out as Manga
2) Light is not a teenager

1). I might be talked into admitting that I've overstated this point. Certainly this wasn't true in the days of Kurosawa, but having lived in Japan for the past 7 years, it certainly feels like most of the big hit movies during that time have some sort of Manga connection. Even a lot of dramas like "Go" or "Always" turn out to be based on a manga in the end, not to mention all more obvious manga derivations (Devilman, Cutie Honey, I could go on). If we throw in movies based on TV shows and anime, I'd be willing to place a bet that this accounts for most of the big budget Japanese movies in the past 5 years, if not most of the recent Japanese movies period. But I've not done a formal study on this, and am open to be convinced otherwise.

2).I wrote this review directed at the average American who knows nothing about this franchise, so I tried to give a brief overview of both the manga and the movie. I knew from discussions with Japanese friends that the manga character starts out as a high school student. In the movie he was in law school, so certainly not in high school anymore and unlikely to be a teenager. I'm not sure if the movie ever clearly states his age, but if you read my review carefully, you'll notice the only time I refer to Light or L as teenagers is when I'm referring to the story behind the manga-anime-movie adaptation, not the movie itself. That was an intentional choice of words on my part, intended because I didn't really know how old he was in the movie.
Upon re-reading my review, however, I can see how this kind of semantic hair slicing can be easy to miss, especially if you're reading it through quickly.

Allow me to suggest, however, that regardless of whether light is a teenager or not, or whether most Japanese cinema is based on manga or not, that both of these are extremely minor points in my review, and I think an undue amount of attention has been focused on both these areas at the expense of ignoring some of my broader points, and that this kind of nit-picking is not always helpful for moving the discussion forward.

Thematically I stand by much of what I said in this review, although Woopak I have read your review as well and I can see where you're coming from and respect your opinion. I guess for me the big issue is not only what themes does the film attempt to address, but how well does it succeed in dealing with those themes. I will admit that this film takes on some pretty ambitious themes, as you mentioned in your review (death penalty, power corrupts, man playing god). For me though the film didn't really give me any new insight into any of these themes, and I'm not convinced the film quite pulled off what it set out to do.

I'm not sure the comparison with Pirates of the Caribbean is entirely apt. After all, as you mention in your review this film attempted to deal with a number of themes that Pirates of the Caribbean never pretended to address. And given how little action there is in this film, it would be hard to compare it to a mindless action fantasy like Pirates of the Caribbean was. A suspense movie maybe, but I tend to judge those by different standards than summer popcorn movies.

I do agree that people are unpredictable, but (as a literature professor of mine once said) they should be written so as to have a predictable unpredictability. In other words, the human mind as unpredictable shouldn't be a catch all excuse for any jump the writer wants to make.

Advo, I'm not entirely sure why my comparisons to Hitchcock, Last supper, and Kill Bill were inappropriate. In the case of Kill Bill for example the only reason I even mentioned that film was as another film that was released in two parts but as a continuous story split into two instead of as a standard sequel. I guess I could have written all that out, but I think Kill Bill is a nice short hand way of conveying the same thing to an American Audience. Last Supper, well admittedly not the greatest film in the world, dealt with a lot of the same themes and I'm not sure why it's not appropriate to make the comparison.

Also I'm not sure why you would say my review has a ridiculous amount of prejudice. Perhaps you could explain that one to me a little more.

That said, I did read with interest your theory that Light had to keep killing in order to appear innocent. This was something I didn't quite catch when I watched the film, but your explanation does make a bit of sense. I still think it would have been much easier to just walk away from the whole thing, but then we come back again to the unpredictability of the human mind.

PS--I'd be interested to hear what you guys thought of Death Note II. Although I see Woopak incorporated elements of both into his review, the last I checked I was the only reviewer on the Death Note II page. It would be nice to get some more opinions over there.

Link of the Day(s)
A number of interesting articles in the Washington Post recently.
I Lost My Son to a War I Oppose. We Were Both Doing Our Duty.
By Andrew J. Bacevich
The people have spoken, and nothing of substance has changed. The November 2006 midterm elections signified an unambiguous repudiation of the policies that landed us in our present predicament. But half a year later, the war continues, with no end in sight. Indeed, by sending more troops to Iraq (and by extending the tours of those, like my son, who were already there), Bush has signaled his complete disregard for what was once quaintly referred to as "the will of the people."

...and just for the sake of contrast, don't forget that while the Bush administration has long used rhetoric about democracy to justify the war in Iraq, our tax dollars are still proping up authoritarian regimes in Egypt.
Help Our Fight for Real Democracy By Wael Abbas

And finally this op-ed from the LA times:
The terrorist we tolerate
The administration's botched handling of Luis Posada Carriles says a lot about Bush's so-called war on terror.

Death Note: Movie Review (Scripted)