L: Change the World

Rating: PG
Running time: 128 minutes
Opens: 21 February 2008, Now Showing

Some info:
1) ANN
2) Wiki
3) Official Site (Japanese)
4) EncoreFilms Site (English)

Ok, this is actually a spinoff from the 2nd live-action movie. But since the live-action movies have already changed the original story somewhat, perhaps spin-off is a bit of a strong word to use. Oh wells, but I won’t deny it’s a golden opportunity for the production team to try to earn some big bucks out of this movie series based on a very popular manga/anime.

For one, I’m quite surprised that Singapore is screening this not too long (approx 2 weeks) after it premiered in Japan. Normally, it’d be something from a month to “long enough for DVDs to hit Japan stores”. Perhaps they’ve realised the “demand” here isn’t as low as expected, or maybe…. ah whatever. Can watch good liao.

Right, enough of pre-review talk. Now on to the main topic. Objectively speaking, from the start I knew that this story isn’t going to be exciting as the Light vs L story arc since there’s not that much of a battle of wits and stuff to begin with. It’s more to sum up L’s remaining lifespan as left off from the 2nd Live-Action movie, which already deviated quite A LOT from the manga storyline. So, viewers should treat this movie fairly and not compare to the original story. Of course, if you were to do that, it obviously is going to be very bad.

ANYWAY, if you even bother to find out a little bit about the movie, you’ll roughly know about the storyline of this spinoff. L tries to deal with 1 final big case before his fated 23 days are up, but in actual fact, he doesn’t really tackle this case in 23 days, since the first few remaining days he spends his time helping various law enforcers around the world in solving some tricky/difficult tasks. Ah well, I’m sure all those people are going to miss him. Lol… The main issue at hand this time is the discovery of a deadly virus, which is potentially going to be use as a bioweapon (hmm, terror-related stuff is quite “hot” these days), and some extremist group (with K involved) intends to use it to “purify” the world by killing the “excess” people who are destroying the ecosystem of mother Earth.

There also 2 kids involved, who each play their important role, especially the one who eventually named to be “Near” by the soon-to-die L. Near in this movie possesses a keen grasp of mathematical concepts, and seem to have a good memory for remembering a long string of numbers to call L’s organisation (I can only remember it starts with 010 and has a 217 in the later half. Lol). Yah, for more details on what roles those kids play, just watch the movie bah. Hic.

Hmm, though the case solving doesn’t seem as exciting as Light’s witty battle, there are also quite a number of funny scenes along the way in the show, and also some basic code breaking/representation bah. I guess the codes aren’t made that hard so that the viewers can understand what’s going on, instead of going “huh? what?”. Haha. But aiyah, I didn’t get a good look at the Circles question which contains an important clue to the antidote content, and apparently is quite difficult to solve since even the genius Near took more than a day to solve! Gosh =P Anyway the funny scenes, are indeed quite funny (like DUH), and Mastuyama Kenichi’s acting of L is indeed very well done. Must have spent a lot of effort to undertake the role so well, oh and also the language lessons to speak in a few European languages and also English. Though I wouldn’t say his English pronunciation is fantastic, it’s quite good liaoz for an average Japanese (irl la).

Ok, now for some JH observations and comments about the show (may not be in order of movie sequence).
1) How did the FBI agent enter L’s premises? FBI is sure resourceful huh, or maybe K and gang’s entrance totally triggered off, giving the FBI agent free roam?
2) I don’t know what type of video conferencing K & L used when they conversed, but L is able to zoom in quite a lot to observe the reflection in the mirror, which is rather small in the video footage. Maybe it’s a full HD video conferencing. Wonderful network in Japan eh?
3) The medical facility which K and Prof Nikaido worked in seems quite weird, the security aspects at least. It’s like so easy to just destroy a lab siah, seeing how K just used a quick fingerprint check and press 1 destroy button. Oh, hate the last scene when Nikaido suddenly pop ups with his erm, unsightly look. Reminds me of a zombie-type movie. Lol.
4) Apparently the virus which attacks sugar as its “energy source” doesn’t seem to affect L 1 bit even though L loves all the sweet and sugar stuff. The power of the Death Note is indeed great. Once your death has been decided, nothing else can take your life away first? Hahaha.
5) Apparently the people on the plane didn’t really die from the virus yet. Perhaps ALL (for those who appear to have died in agony) of them happen to lose consciousness only since the antidote still works and can revive them! Unless you’re telling me the antidote has 起死回生 effect, cos I see the baddies (who apparently have a severe onset of the virus) being escorted off, awake and walking, by the police force.
6) There’s cameo appearances by Misa, Light at the start of the movie, and incidentally in the credits, Light’s name is last on the special thanks list for “old characters”. How can such an important character be ranked last. Lol…
7) F’s code phrase for the boy to speak to Watari (or in the movie, L who answered the phone) is F1225, and L interpreted as a gift from F. Hence, I deduce that 1225 stands for X’mas, and is used to denote a “X’mas gift”. Lol… Just my own deduction though. But it makes sense!=P

All right, enough of observations. As to why I stayed for the credits is because there’s a -really short- ending note that L died peacefully at the very end for about 3 seconds? Hahaha, those who can’t be bothered can just skip it. You’re not missing out much. =D

Though it’s not as exciting as the original Death Note story, one has to be objective about this movie when watching it. It still has its merits and all, especially the funny scenes. Haha… it still has its entertainment value, but die-hard fans of Death Note should probably stay away from this one. Lawl~

My take: 6.5/10.

p.s. I don’t think there’ll be a spinoff involving Near. That’ll really be pushing it to attract people to watch, since it’ll really, really be totally a detective crime-fighting movie liaoz, with hardly reference to Death Note… Haha. Oh, and sorry for the long entry. =P

---

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• ’Death Note’ Manga Spawns Movie, Crime Wave
• Hancock Movie Review by Nick Wolfwood