Film Review: Death Note II: The Last Name
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On October 15th and 16th Viz released into theaters the second live-action Death Note movie, following up its May theatrical release of the first film. My review of the second live-action Death Note movie is going to be much like my review of the first. Death Note II: The Last Name is a direct continuation of the first movie, picking up the story almost exactly where it left off.
Everyone’s feeling sorry for Light Yagami since the tragic death of his girlfriend Shiori- everyone except Ryuk the shinigami, who knows Light engineered his girlfriend’s murder with the Death Note. Light fakes a thirst for vengeance as an excuse to join his father’s task force, where he can keep an eye on L, the detective who’s pursuing Light’s murderous alter ago Kira.
Light thinks he’s got his bases covered, until a new complication drops in: Misa Amano, a pop idol who also has a Death Note given to her by the shingami Rem. Kira killed the criminal who murdered Mias’s parents, and she idolizes him. She finds out Light is Kira, and it’s love at first sight, at least for her. At first Light is annoyed by her devotion and her clumsy handling of the Death Note. But then he sees an opportunity to use her to further deceive L. Misa becomes part of an elaborate scheme to kill off L so Kira can ruthlessly create an ideal world devoid of crime.
What follows is an almost madcap plot of Death Notes claimed and given away, memories lost and regained, some slight bondage shinigami revealed, people killed and (in L’s case) massive amounts of sugar consumed.
From the beginning the movies have diverged significantly from the plot of the original manga, and The Last Name takes a completely different tack. Death Note weaves such a complex web of events, plans, counterplans and surprises that adapting it into two 2-hour movies could have been a nightmare. However, Tetsuya Oishi, the screenwriter, does a skillful job at presenting a believable alternate version of events. Sticklers who want to see every detail of the manga recreated will be disappointed, but other fans will see these films as a fun alternate history. The end of The Last Name is clumsier than the end of the manga and feels more heavy-handed, but it still holds up well.
The complete cast of the first movie returns for the second. We didn’t see much of Erika Toda as Misa in the first film, but The Last Name shows she can pout with the best of them. She doesn’t show much emotional range, but Misa is a shallow character by nature, so it works. Tatsuya Fujiwara is still delightfully smarmy as Light, though his dramatic turn near the end of the film strays perilously near histrionics. Once again, Kenichi Matsuyama shambles to perfection as L. He turns uncharacteristically sentimental and lucid near the end, but that’s not so much his fault as the writer’s (and, judging from the reactions of the teenage girls in front of us, fans might like it). Takeshi Kaga (Iron chef’s own Chairman Kaga) turns into a surprisingly powerful performance as Chief Yagami, head of the Kira investigation and Light’s father.
The story is fast-paced and is filmed accordingly, with lots of quick, sharp edits. The music, by Kenji Kawai (who scored both Ghost in the Shell movies) is suitably dramatic but never intrusive; there are even long stretches of the movie that have no background music at all. The inclusion of The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Snow (Hey Oh)” over the ending credits was an odd one to say the least, and it feels entirely out of place in a film like this one.
One of fans’ major concerns about a live-action Death Note was the portrayal of the shinigami. The first film proved that CGI technology is equal to creating Ryuk; this movie gives animators an even better chance to show off their skills with Misa’s shinigami Rem. The shinigami are beautifully detailed and recreate the manga’s original designs in every bizarre detail. We even get a peek into the Shinigami Realm, a barren wasteland (I was slight disappointed, though- there’s a certain shinigami with a Native American feather headdress and huge face-devouring sunglasses I would have liked to see).
Viz has released both films into theaters with a dub track. I was rather upset about that, since I personally prefer subtitles, but I have to admit the dub is excellent and I quickly got used to it. Again, though, Viz has neglected to subtitles things like signs and newspapers, so those who can’t read Japanese are left in the dark by the various news headlines that the camera often zooms in on. One odd choice made by the dub director was to give Rem a very deep, masculine voice- when in both the manga and anime series Rem is identified as being female, and the anime’s seiyuu is female(as female as a shinigami can be, anyway).
If you read my prior review (here!), you probably noticed me bitching about the proliferation of squealing, shrieking, wailing fangirls in the theater. Fangirls at a theatrical release of a Death Note movie are pretty much a given, but it was nearly unbearable. Thankfully this time around there were far fewer fangirls in attendance, most likely because we now live in a larger city where multiple theaters were showing the film (where we lived before, only one theater in town was screening it).
All in all, Death Note II : The Last Name is a solid conclusion to the first live-action movie, and offers a fun alternate ending to the manga for fans. It will be interesting to see how Viz handles a U.S. DVD release; hopefully the theatrical release’s few failings (no subtitles for written text, the dub-only track) will be addressed then.
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