"OMG!!! YOU ACTUALLY WENT TO WATCH A MOVIE!!!!"
Please note: Spoilers from many different films might appear ahead based on whim of the author. If you are those kind of people who cannot take spoilers, then you might as well just skip this post. Plot points will be used indiscriminately to illustrate points and concepts that will be mentioned by the writer.
Lets begin our review of this movie...
When I first heard about the movie, I knew it was going to be another one of those hyped-up movie, but I'm not sure if it was going to be bad or good. "Death note" has caught my interest for quite some time because of the deep and elaborate storyline and the conflict between the two characters. It reminds me a lot of "jigoku shoujo" where a lot of conflicting moral questions are asked, such as is it right for us to send people to their deaths because the world would be better without this group of people? and who is the real decider of what is right and what is wrong?Naturally, I had hoped that this movie would be able to live up to what it had built itself to be. In terms of character development, storyline and the like. Unfortunately, I was utterly disappointed as I stared at the screen in bewilderment at what is happening there...
It makes no logical sense...
Lets start with the most distinguishing one:
We get taken to this lab or something where they are planting trees and flowers. After the boss scolded some guy for selling this virus to the superpowers in the world (he wants to cleanse the planet of humans using that virus), the guy walks off and then turns around and viciously stabs the boss. The boss dies and the three other people in the area looks "shocked".
After that, the guy who killed the boss turns around and told them that they should go and cleanse the world by killing off all the humans as humans are the ones that have been hurting the environment. After about 10 seconds, everyone in the group accepted that person's idea and actively starts to get ready for that eventual attack on the human race...
Alright, big problem number 1:
Let's imagine this, someone walked up to you one day and tells you this story :"Do you know why the planet Earth is in such a bad state now? Its all because of us, because of the race called "humans". We take but we do not produce, we are greedy and we grab everything before us. Do you remember Noah's ark? that was God's cleaning of the human race and the world. The time has come for us again to activate "Noah's ark", to wipe the planet clean of the race called "human" to......"
(Biblical examples used out of context, please do not treat this as correct)
Unless you are extremely simple-minded or very weak-willed, no one will accept this radical school of thought in a short span of about 10 seconds. Its even more so when the three people are still grieving about the death of the boss. I mean, what the heck?
Another point to note is that even if the 4 people there have already long awaited this to happen, it doesn't make any logical sense that they should be shocked by the death of the boss (which they do) and the person even takes time to explain what the heck is going on...
Personally, I felt that it was a very huge plot hole. Possibly, this scene could be about... 10 minutes long to go through the whole scenario properly, but it got reduced to 10 seconds...
Big problem number 2:
Remember the cute girl whose father killed himself by injecting himself with the virus? Either she has horrible mood swing, or she's crazy. Face it, how often do you see a young girl ready to kill someone, just to seek revenge?
Before I continue, lets take a look at "Peacemaker Kurogane". This anime took a total of approximately 20 episodes (minus those lame episodes) to show how a young boy finally strengthened his resolve to avenge his parent's death. Originally, the boy was reluctant to kill and he even disagreed with it even though he wanted to avenge their deaths, but at the final episode, the boy was forced to kill in a Do-Or-Die scenario and then the invisible barrier to killing others was broken.
All this goes to show how hard it is for a human to kill another human. It take strong resolve and desire to see the person dead and that's when it is possible for a human to grab a knife and just kill a person. And yet....
In the movie, it was established very early that the girl is weak-willed and will not be the sort of person who will grab a knife and go around avenging the death of her father. All the early developments in the films seems to suggest that she is a weak girl without a strong character and will most likely not grab a knife and kill people.
It is thus extremely shocking to me when half-way through the film, the girl disappeared from the medical school and went to arrange a session with the killers so that she can kill them... Sure, acting on impulse you might say, but considering the early developments of the films, if you want to say acting on impulse, there was nothing that happened then that would have triggered such a reaction from her (Let's see, picnic on a rooftop with your friends... ehh?)...
Its a serious "no link" and I wished it made a bit more sense.
Big problem number 3:
For no apparent reason (other then to cash in on those "L" lovers [L doesn't exist], death note fans, and trying to put the story into the world of "Death Note"), L just had to write his own name into the Death Note right at the start of the movie. O-K...
23 days to live...
I was expecting that to be some sort of time bomb for L and the entire movie. Maybe L dies halfway or something and yet he leaves enough instruction for them to follow to solve the huge problem that has arisen... That would have strengthened the idea that L is a great detective...But no....
For the first few days, we just see L wasting his time away, eating candy, and oh yea, clearing that huge stack of unsolved cases (which he does in about 1 day)(23 to 21 to 16 to 14 to 12..., you get the idea)After which, the story starts with only around 12 days left to live.
Of course, this gets even worse because it doesn't seem to create a lot of problem with the rest of the story. By the time the whole story ends, L still have 2 days left to live... Which brings up this amazing question: What's the point of the 23 days if it doesn't contribute to the story?
I have the answer:
To cash in on death note fans...
This whole idea of the 23 days reminds me of a channel 8 tv drama a few years back called "密云20天". The storyline of this shows takes exactly 20 days to unfold and the whole time limit of the 20 days is continuously refered to by the way the film is structured so that it creates a sort of "impending doom" on the viewer. I felt that it was a great way to make use of "time" as it creates a huge connection for everything to link together...
But in this movie?
Big problem number 4:
K...
WHO THE HECK IS K ANYWAY?
She turns up quite early through the film and then through a freakish turn of events, she decides to join the bunch of people that wants to wipe human off the face of this planet.
Remind me again, isn't L and K in the same freaking organisation?
I have a few big problems with this:
1. Why the hell do K wants to wipe humans off the face of this planet?
2. How did she get in touch with those people anyway?
Big problem number 5:
She hijacked a plane...
which brings up the point that it makes no logical sense that the army isn't called in. Ok, we could say that terrorism isn't such a big issue yet during the time period that the story is based in... but even before 9-11, plane hijackers were commonly made to face off with special forces during the hostage rescue process...
...So where the heck are the special forces?
There's still one more big problem, which is the complete disregard for the law of physics, but heck, all the films do this all the time anyway...
If we take a huge step back and just take a look at the film... it seems very pathetic once you try to put the whole "Death Note" universe into the film. By itself, it would have been a great film with quite a good story line if it was developed properly, but too much time was wasted on the whole point of trying to link it to death note instead of explaining what is going on in the story. Too many things were assumed and too many things were glossed over... something you seriously do not want to see in a story with huge character developments and plots...
Just looking at the whole summary above, I could have easily named L as Sherlock Holmes, K as Nemesis, F as 007, and the story would still have made sense.
So...
Equation of the movie:
(A good story with good plot developments) + (Death note) - (Parts of the story deleted to have death note in it) = (L Change the world)
I would rather have the movie go into the psychological aspects of the character instead. It would have been an interesting exploration of how those people think.
Lets all go watch "Paradise Now" shall we?
Discmon
P.S. "Paradise Now" is a movie about suicide bombers and how they are not mindless fanatics who just wants to kill as much people as possible and go to paradise. It tries to delve very deeply into the psychological mindset of these suicide bombers and explain what are some of the things that drives them to do these actions.
