Plot: Light (Tatsuya Fujiwara) an intelligent young law student looses his faith in justice when he discovers a large percentage of the criminals in Tokyo can get away with murder. One night he discovers a black note book entitled “Death Note”, inside the notebook there are a list of instructions quoting “The human whose name is written in this note shall die.”
When touching the book he is introduced to a God of Death – Ryuk (Shido Nakamura), he had carelessly dropped the Death Note, but he allows Light to keep the book; “Finders, keepers”.
Unsure whether to believe the books supernatural powers he tries it out be writing down the name of a criminal he saw on the evening news. Shock Horror by the time he’s read the morning paper the criminal had died of a heart attack. With this new ability at his disposal he begins to deal out justice to all evil doers.
With the crime rate dropping by 70% and the inexplicable amount of deaths accruing, he soon catches the attention of the IPO (International Police Organization) and a mysterious detective only known as “L”. They quickly discover that this serial killer, dubbed by the public “Kira” is from Japan and is a student.
Can Light outsmart the super detective L before it’s too late?
Review: From the description alone I knew right away I would enjoy this movie. The thought of obtaining book which could slay your enemies with the whisk of a pen is every underdogs dream. Secondly, this is most notable role that Tatsuya Fujiwara has played since his role of school boy turn freedom fighter – Nanahara Shuya from the acclaimed Battle Royale movies.
The film doesn’t seem to have been filmed on a big budget, you know that straight away, the movie is almost looks like it was made for television, if it was, surely the best TV film ever made in Japan. As you expect the movie was originally based on a successful series of manga’s written by Tsugumi Ohba and illustrated Takeshi Obata.
The movie works quite well for it’s two hour running time, occasionally it dries up, but they soon throw several cunning twists to draw you back into the movie.
The only familiar names from cast, excluding the fore-mentioned Fujiwara (remember Japanese cinema isn’t my strong point) was Shido Nakamura. Shido provides the voice of the god of death – “Ryuk”. Youngster Ken’ichi Matsuyama plays the amazing detective L, who has one heck of a sweet tooth, he plays his oddball character quite well. Japan’s “Iron Chief” Takeshi Kaga plays Soichiro Yagami the hard working family man and detective, the veteran actor is quite good too!
Final thoughts, great movie, I loved the story and the cast! Enjoy!!
