Review:

Pro -

I've never read the manga or seen the anime, so I was coming in from a fresh perspective. A friend of mine who has read the manga was concerned how such a verbose (in a good way) manga could translate well into a movie, but the director (same guy who directed Versus and Godzilla Final Wars) seemed to manage to translate the material well. The opening of the movie focuses on violent criminals mysteriously dying so there is immediately plenty of action to draw you in.

Also to keep the movie moving along, they focus a lot of tension of moments, like say confrontations between characters or the fear of being discovered. So there is the sense of action by using tension to keep the viewers focus on the movie.

Then it gets into culture things that resonate with the Japanese (or as I understand it). There's all this "data" swirling around about the mysterious Kira. There's people talking, texting, on websites, in the news, on TV, ect., ect. For such a connected society, the movie does a good job to show how an urban myth would circulate in today's society.

And speaking of Japanese Culture, the concept of the lead character wanting to start a revolution and stop crime fits well with Japan's current situation. Back in the 80's Japan's economy was riding high and the promise of a rich future for everyone wasn't as much of a dream as a reality. Then Japan's economy slowly fell into a recession that has almost last 2 decades and combine that with other issues with a growing elderly population with a shrinking birth rate, and things were getting bad, not good. So now you have all these young people that were promised a bright and rosy future, now being handed something not so bright and you end up with a lot of dissatisfaction and frustration. This causes crime to get worse and more violent has some people act and respond to their frustration. So with Light, I can see that same frustration, but he tries to bring control, but his control to this trying time in Japan. Similar with L, he tries to bring control to Japan (and the world too), but his form of control.

Also they wear "masks" or separate identities to hide themselves and free themselves to perform acts that would otherwise be considered "wrong" or questionable by normal society. The police chief makes several comments about L, who is suppose to be good, about how his actions are considered wrong. The Police Chief does go along with L's actions only because there's no other choice to capture the killer but the Chief at least shows having moral issue about their actions, where as L doesn't even flinch and thinks it's all a game.

The "masks" of the two lead characters also plays well into other modern concept, the anonymity of the internet. They hide behind their "handles" or "screennames" and act out in ways they would never do with face to face.

Cons -

The dub is bad. The voice acting was so bad that the subtitles didn't want to be in the same movie with the dub. There's a lot of text in the movie, and the movie takes time to give shots of the various text so you can read it, but there's a problem. All the text is in Japanese, and there's not an English Subtitle to be found. If the text that tells you location names like say "The Police Station" or times like "The Next Day" aren't subtitled. I was disappointed by this because Viz's other Japanese releases (like say Kamikaze Girls) were good releases and the subtitles even helped explain cultural things you might not understand. But then I noticed this is technically a Shonen Jump release which is Viz's teenaged aged line of manga, anime, and movies that are more geared toward the male audience than say their Shojo Beat line. That would maybe help explain why there was a Red Hot Chili Pepper's song playing over the credits.

It might also be good thing that I didn't know much about Death Note before the movie because I might have been annoyed by all the fangirls (and a few fanboy) squealing with delight as their favorite Bishonen psychopath character on the screen. Honestly I was taking the movie more seriously considering the dark themes the story was dealing with, but I guess people raised on anime and manga don't take things as seriously. But that's not right either because I was raised on anime and manga.

Overall -

The movie is a good thriller with a fairly interesting story, characters, and moral dilemmas to mess with said characters. You don't need to know about the manga or the anime to enjoy it and the movie stands well on it's on despite the fact it's the first part of a 2 part movie.

Trivia -

The actor who plays the Police Chief also played the original Chairman of the show Iron Chef.

[Posted by Joamette Gil on behalf of David Doub]