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Death Note Movie: Theater Review
Last week I attended a screening of the first live-action Death Note movie. I love the anime as it has some of the biggest twists and most shocking events this side of Battlestar Galactica or Lost. Now, I know the movie has been out since 2006, but I didn't want to see it earlier than I had too as to not ruin anything in the anime. However, there was no chance I would miss seeing the film on a big theater screen, though, and I doubted that the movie would reach anywhere near as far as I have seen in the anime. I believe I have six or seven episodes left in the anime and plan to read the manga at some point. I've only actually read six manga series in my life, so me wanting to read the Death Note manga has to say something positive for the series, right? Well, Death Note was only going to be on the big screen for two nights only so there was no way I would miss out. For the uninitiated, Death Note (the movie version) is about Light Yagami (played by Tatsuya Fujiwara), a law student who has become disillusioned with justice. He sees criminals that have committed terrible crimes walking freely on the streets. One night he finds a Death Note on a rainy street and his life, and the lives of those around him, are changed forever. According to the rules of the Death Note, if a person's name is written in its pages, then that person will die 40 seconds later of a heart attack. With the notebook, Light murders criminals that have not been brought to justice for the murders or crimes they have committed. Throughout the movie Light finds that he can specify the time of death, the type of death, and manipulate the events leading up to a death by writing them in the Death Note. The notebook was dropped on the Earth by a Shinigami (a Death God) with an insatiable taste for apples named Ryuk. Ryuk confronts Light about the note and informs him that all he'll do is observe. Light lets the power of the notebook take him and envisions a world where he will determine who lives and dies. He only wants good people to live, but his execution of criminals has brought the attention of the Japanese police, FBI, and the mysterious L, the most renowned crime-solver in the world. I made plans with a couple friends and bought tickets well in advance as I was going on vacation soon. The day after I returned from vacation was the night for Death Note so it all worked out fairly well. According to the information on the Fathom Events site (well before the two nights the movie was to be shown) the movie was going to be subtitled. It wasn't. The movie we all saw was dubbed. There were at maximum maybe a hundred people in the theater and the collective disappointment that it was dubbed was overwhelming. Now, I'm not one of those anime fans that rabidly hates dubbed anime. I'll enjoy either. What I don't like is when something is advertised to be a certain way. Everyone at the theater was thrown off when the first words they heard were in English and not Japanese. The English voice-over was of mixed quality. The main characters sounded fine. Any characters that were not the main characters suffered from some Grade-A terrible voice-work. The same voice-over cast used in the anime were used in the live-action film, so I was able to get into the movie fairly easily after the jarring revelation that it was indeed dubbed. Ryuk's voice did have some extra demonic quality to it, which was a nice little change. However, the voice-over work for Light seemed not quite as good as it is in the anime. I have seem most of the anime in English and have thus far only watched the first fifteen episodes in their original Japanese, but both have their own qualities and both are well done. I can't really accurately judge the actors' performances in the film due to the dubbed dialogue, but they seemed to play the parts well. Ken'ichi Matsuyama, who plays L, was especially keen on the character's eccentric ways. The few crazy times we see the dumb yet sinister girl Misa Amane seemed well-played by Erika Toda. Light's father was played by none other than Chairman Takeshi Kaga, probably most famous for biting into a bell pepper on Iron Chef. The story was altered a little from the anime, and I'm sure the manga as well. Movie do this all the time, though, so the differences did not bother me. The thing I was worried about the most was the appearance of Ryuk. Was he going to be a cheesy puppet or crappy CGI? Fortunately, he looked fantastic. The CGI wasn't the best I've seen, but it was very well done and of much higher quality than I was expecting. Ryuk looked like a real-life Shinigami at points in the film. The credit sequence was odd as it had the Red Hot Chili Peppers song "Dani California" playing. It's an odd choice for Death Note. After the credits was a trailer for the first Death Note movie. Oh man, I should totally go see that. The trailer also points out that the movie features an ending credit theme song of "Dani California." Why in the world would you make such a big deal about the song that plays during the credits, especially one that doesn't fit the movie? Besides, it's Death Note; there's no need to make a big deal out of anything other than that. Over half of the theater-goers left during the credits, but those who stayed got to see a short behind-the-scenes featurette. Those that left didn't miss anything as it was nothing more than the usual making-of fluff. Nothing of great note was learned from it since the actual amount of time that the director was talking about the film was minimal. What was unusual about it was that parts of the Japanese voiceovers were subtitled. If they can subtitle this, why not the movie? And why would they have some parts of the featurette subtitled and other parts dubbed? It was strange, but those of us that remained in the theater got to hear what a few of the characters sound like in Japanese. I don't pay as much attention to the credits of the anime as they go by rather quickly, but I also learned that the voice of L is none other than Alessandro Juliani, otherwise known as Lt. Felix Gaeta on Battlestar Galactica. Juliani is now twice as awesome for being on two of my favorite characters on two of my favorite shows. How is he going to deal with that leg? Oh, wrong show. This Death Note movie was only the first of two as it has a cliffhanger ending, but both were shot in conjunction with each other. The first movie covers episodes 1-9 and from what little I've read the second movie will cover stuff between episodes 10-25. The second film, titled Death Note: The Last Name (yes, it's a weird title) is sure to make an appearance at a few theaters at some point and I'll definitely be there. Sharing the film with friends and strangers was a great time and I have to see what Rem (another Shinigami) looks like on the big screen. Thanks to this I'm expecting the film to be dubbed next time, but I'll watch the subtitled versions at some point, most likely when the DVDs hit. - Shawn - 05/27/08 |
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