The Star Review Allan Koay
Verdict : ALLAN!!!! You do not understand the movie said you do not understand the movie rather giving all this stupid excuse. I hope there will be some write up on Sunday anime section regarding Allan Koay comments.
Deadly boring
By ALLAN KOAY
Death Note 2: The Last Name
Rating(out of 5): NR
(Golden Screen Cinemas)
Starring: Tatsuya Fujiwara, Yu Kashii, Takeshi Kaga, Nana Katase, Shido Nakamura, Asaka Seto
If you’re struggling to stay awake, or alternatively to nod off, Death Note 2 will provide the much-needed knockout punch that will send you into slumberland faster than you can say Dunlopillo.
In fact, I wish they’d show this movie as inflight entertainment. I’m one of those people who have trouble sleeping during any journey, often ending up suffering on long-haul flights, and this movie may just be the cure for my problems.
Fidgeting all through your flight? No problem: Death Note 2! Your kids are wreaking havoc in the plane? Easy: Death Note 2! Is your economy seat too small and uncomfortable? Relax: Death Note 2!
Yes, Death Note 2 is more effective than a sleeping pill. Only in the world of manga do you get heroes with fluorescent names (Light Yagami) and Sesame Street-inspired monikers: Today’s movie hero was brought to you by the letter L!
Heck, there’s even a God of Death named Jealous (HUH?!). In fact, in this movie, you get three Gods of Death for the price of one movie ticket (the other two being Ryuk and Rem). All this should, by right, spell R-I-O-TO-U-S F-U-N, but it doesn’t.
While the first movie was just as silly, it still made for some riveting moments when the cat-and-mouse game between villain Light and hip-as-a-boy-band-member adversary L threatened to reach an explosive end (and it did).
But Death Note 2 is mired in pseudo-philosophical nonsense, and its dire attempts to be oh-so-serious squeeze out any last drop of fun. What you get is a dried up, old, lumbering mummy of a movie. Why be so serious?
I mean, your lead characters are named “Light” and “L,” for goodness’ sake! And you have a God of Death named Jealous! Come on, already.
Somewhere in the mix, they’ve also thrown in a second death notebook, which falls (quite literally) into the hands of Misa Amane, a TV hostess. This girl has exchanged some years of her life for “the eyes.”
Yes, “the eyes.” Cue ominous music. And just what in manga-dom are “the eyes”?
Well, they give their owner the power to see the name of every person that comes into sight. Handy, since L’s unknown real name was the only thing that kept him alive in the first movie. So now, this takes the advantage away from the cops.
Meanwhile, Light has devised a diabolical plan where he infiltrates the police and works from the inside to find out L’s real identity. When he discovers that there is a second death notebook, he decides to team up with its owner.
But when the police nab his partner-incrime, L’s plans begin to fall apart. Or do they?
What follows is a lot of waiting and waiting and waiting and ... so excruciating that you'd beg them to write your name in the notebook and so end your misery.
The offerings of Japanese films have been rather dismal lately: Sinking of Japan, Forbidden Siren, Death Note, Death Note 2 ... It makes you wonder what the distributors are thinking because there are, and were, a lot of good Japanese films out there.
Kurosawa Kiyoshi’s Retribution (about a detective and a ghost) will probably not see the light of day here (his Loft didn’t). The same fate will probably befall Koreeda Hirokazu’s Hana. His grand tear-jerker, Nobody Knows, sure didn’t pique any distributor’s interest here. Instead, we got the saccharine, melodramatic tear-jerker known as Crying Out Love in the Centre of the World – hardly great filmmaking.
Not a single Kitano Takeshi film has made it to our screens, except Hana-Bi, which had a limited showing as part of the Japanese Film Festival at Golden Screen Cinemas.
I had to travel all the way across the Causeway to catch his last film, the mindbending Takeshis. And surprise, surprise, our neighbours also get to see Miike Takashi's Big Bang Love: Juvenile A!
Even crowd-pleasers like Shall We Dansu? didn’t make it here. Instead, we got the poor imitation from Hollywood, starring Richard Gere, a poor replacement for the great Yakusho Koji.
So, dear distributors, where are the good Japanese films? Kitano, Koreeda, Kurosawa, Miike, Yamada Yoji, Iwai Shunji, Masayuki Suo, Naoto Takenaka — keep a lookout for these names next time, will ya?
Pretty please?
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