By Jason Lacsamana
Death Note 2: The Last Name just now being released here in the U.S. with english voice overs was originally released two years ago in Japan originally titled Desu n & ocirc;to: The Last Name is based on the popular Japanese animation Death Note. The film features a young man named Light who finds the notebook of the shinigami(Japanese name for death gods) Ryuk. These notebooks of shinigami are special in which the name of whoever is written in it dies. Light, realizing the power and potential of his newly found notebook takes on the alter ego of a vigilante named Kira and uses the notebook to punish all those he sees unfit to live mainly criminals. This film picks up from the ending of the first one in which Light is joining a special task for that seeks to find Kira to avoid suspicion of him being Kira.
Let me start off by saying, if you haven't seen the original animation or the first movie you'll be completely lost.The film itself was pretty funny mainly because the voice overs, it wasn't as bad as one of those old kung-fu movies with English voice overs but it was still bad enough to make me laugh. Although I do give them credit for having the same voice over actors for the movie that also did the American voice overs for the animation. It was also disappointing that the movie left out scenes from the animation which I thought were crucial to the story line. Other than the funny voice overs and the absence of some original scenes I found the movie to be a great remake of the original animation. The CG animation for the shinigami was also pretty cool. Id give this film 4stars out of 5
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