Death Note

I just finished watching the two Death Note live action movies, which are really one story spread over two films. This story originated as manga, then as an anime series, and eventually as movies. An American remake is supposed to be in the works.

The fundamental premise is an interesting one. It immediately reminded me of the roleplaying game Sorcerer in several respects, though the parallel is imperfect, and I'm likely to borrow some elements for roleplaying material in the future. A young man named Light finds a notebook with instructions explaining that if he writes a person's name in it while thinking of their face, that person will die. Thinking of the person's face prevents potential mistaken identity or duplicate name situations. If he does not specify how the person dies, the target dies of a heart attack. If he does specify, the death occurs at the time and place exactly as described. Light's father is a police officer, and because Light is frustrated by the way criminals frequently evade punishment for their crimes, he begins using the notebook to deal out justice as he perceives it. Of course, power proverbially corrupts, and Light soon finds himself on very slippery moral ground.

His own father is part of a task force trying to track him down, and the task force is led by a strange genius known as "L". Most of the story involves the cat-and-mouse game between L and Light, so I'd be spoiling it by saying anything more. The actor playing L gives a memorably weird performance that is enough reason by itself to rent these two films. I felt that Light's moral descent plays out a little too quickly in the first movie, and my wife assures me that it works much better with the slower pace of the anime series. I don't have a whole lot of hope for the American remake, since it's likely that they'll downplay the suspense and build up the action and special effects, but they could always surprise me.

In the meantime, I'd highly recommend the Japanese live action movies if you can appreciate a suspense film with a strong supernatural element and don't mind the CGI "gods of death" who get a fair amount of screen time.