Film Review: Death Note 2 – The Last Name (2006)

SYNOPSIS:
In the second installment of the Death Note film franchise, Light Yagami meets a second Kira and faithful follower Misa Amane and her Shinigami named Rem. Light attempts to defeat L along with Teru Mikami (a Kira follower) and Kiyomi Takada (another Kira follower) but in the end will Light win? or will a Shinigami named Ryuk make all the difference in Light’s victory or his ultimate death?

REVIEW:
The 2nd film in the series that started it all. The Death Note legacy has a few rules though that should be mentioned. They are of course mentioned in the intro but can fly by a bit fast if your not paying attention. In any case, if you are watching the 2nd in the series first, you should study the intro credits a bit to get the facts of the death note legacy.

So if your like me…a first-timer, the premise is a bit confusing on first look. That is, it’s hard to tell who is what and what is who. For starters Light Yagami (Tatsuya Fujiwara) a student, is actually Kira. Kira is the fictional name of the person who is causing all the criminals to die. We gather pretty quickly that he is in possession of a Death note and able to do so. L (Ken’ichi Matsuyama) is the detective who despite the fact that criminals are dying is intent on finding Kira and revealing his identify. I suppose that means that no one can control death or face sentencing themselves.

L is on the trail to figure out who Kira is, and how he is causing the deaths of others. Meanwhile Light is visited quite often by the god of death who sort of eggs him along. This god of death is called Ryuk and is a spectral entity in 3D form that only Light can see. The 2nd god of death whom Misa has access to is called ReM, a more compassionate god of death. The film takes alot of mystery, thriller and fantasy elements into an original storyline that once you’ve gotten into the groove is addicting. These gods of death are attached to these notebooks. But there is more than one. And thee is also more than 1 notebook. If a god of death decides to extend a life by writing in a book themselves, then the person can live longer but the god turns to dust. It’s sort of like a saving grace for a soul who deserves it. As the world tries to discover who Kira is, L continues to save the world by killing off bad guys. Suddenly the game has changed when a young girl named Misa Amane (Erika Toda) gets ahold of a notebook. She begins to impersonate Kira’s ideals bent on killing off more folks as Kira II. Her power is the god of death’s eyes who she obtained by sacrificing a portion of her lifespan.

The police force and L try and put the pieces together as more bodies stack up. Light joins up with L in an effort to try and fool him on the real identity of Kira. He also manages to join forces with Misa who happens to have a crush on Light. If this all sounds like alot to consume it may very well be, however the film clock sin at over 2 hours which is plenty of time to get the whole gist of it and see how the story all plays out. The Gods of Death are odd at best. Towering above the humans in 3D form who resemble monsters comment along the way and while staying somewhat uninvolved still manage to influence the humans here and there. This element brings alot of the fantastical to an otherwise mystery type of film. I did enjoy the movie and had waited quite a bit to get to this one. As we already know, the concept sparks more sequels which I’ll be taking a look at as well. “Death Note” is highly original, fun and quirky all rolled in one. I found detective L to be odd little bird who needs to get out more… check out the franchise that everyone’s talking about!