LiaT aJacH…@_@

The Japanese production L Change the World captures the eventful last days of the famed Death Note investigator.

LEAVING his underground investigation headquarters, the unflappable, reclusive detective takes the train, takes imperilled children under his wing and even tries to jump onto a departing airplane during the last 23 days of his life in the Death Note spin-off, L Change the World.

The success of the big hits of 2006, Death Note and Death Note: The Last Name, which raked in 8bil yen (about RM250mil) at the box office, was attributed largely to the original manga’s intriguing story about an unholy notebook whose owner can kill people by writing their names in it.

In Death Note, Kenichi Matsuyama gave a strong performance in the role of L, a super-smart private detective fighting a psychological war against a serial killer who uses the notebook to kill criminals in a misguided effort to cleanse the world. And now, the spin-off L Change the World.

The movie portrays the last 23 days of L’s life, which were not depicted in Death Note: The Last Name, and focuses on his very last job – preventing a bioterrorism plot to use a deadly virus cooked up by a virologist working with a terrorist group.

In Last Name, L determines his own destiny with the notebook by writing that he will peacefully die 23 days later – the Death Note’s maximum period for controlling people’s deaths – as the only measure to protect his life from the serial killer who tries to find L’s real name to kill him with the notebook.

“In L Change the World, I wanted to portray L’s human side, which was not shown in the Death Note series,” director Hideo Nakata told The Daily Yomiuri recently.

Nakata is widely known for his horror films, including Ringu (1998), Ringu 2 (1999) and his Hollywood venture The Ring Two (2005).

In L Change the World, the director focuses on L’s involvement with an unnamed Thai boy (played by Japanese actor Narushi Fukuda) and a Japanese middle-school girl Maki (Mayuko Fukuda). L happens to meet them while researching a deadly virus that is 10 times more infectious than the Ebola virus.

Pursued by the bioterrorism group, L flees with the boy and Maki, both of whom are keys to developing the vaccine, gradually opening his heart to them in his own shy way.

Twenty-two-year-old Matsuyama made his film debut in 2003, and won the Japan Academy Award for Best New Actor in 2005 with his performance in Otoko Tachi no Yamato. He played the lead role in the 2007 Japanese TV drama series Sexy Voice and Robo.

The director praises Matsuyama’s performance as L. “He’s an actor who is ‘possessed’ by his role 24 hours a day during the filming period,” Nakata said. “Two weeks before we started filming, his face changed to L’s with his face in a permanent frown.”

Nakata appears pessimistic about the future of the human race when it comes to global warming and other environmental problems. He says his opinion is close to that of the movie’s virologist, Kimiko Kujo (Youki Kudoh), who says in one scene, “As a species, the human population has become too numerous (to survive on the Earth)!”

“To be honest, I think mankind will perish sooner or later,” Nakata said.

On the other hand, he seems to be delivering a bright message to viewers in the film. “People say we should protect our planet. But who on earth can do it without trying to protect people around you first?” That’s what he wanted to show through L, who tries to protect the boy and Maki, he says.

In the closing scene, viewers will understand why the movie title is not L “Changes” the World but L “Change” the World. – The Daily Yomiuri / Asia News Network

 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 16th, 2008 at 10:06 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.