L CHANGE THE WORLD
October 9th 2009 22:07
Category: Videos
Based on the Death Note manga by: Tsugumi Ohba & Takeshi Obata
Director: Hideo Nakata
Screenplay by: Hirotoshi Kobayashi
Producers: Tadashi Tanaka, Nobuhiro Iizuka & Takahiro Kobashi
Starring: Kenichi Matsuyama, Youki Kudoh, Mayuko Fukuda, Kiyotaka Nambara & Masanobu Takashima
Produced by: L Film Partners
Released by: Madman Entertainment
Running Time: 124 minutes Rating: MA 15
L, the man who frankly in my opinion is the twenty first century’s equivalent to Sherlock Holmes in his capacity as the world’s greatest detective once again reprises his role as the seeker of justice in this film. And he is once again confronted with an opponent who has megalomaniacal delusions about the world and the way in which it should be moulded to fit a particular vision. This time though, rather than employing a Death Note, his opponents have opted for something more conventional though no less destructive in achieving their objectives. In the Book of Revelations one of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse is Pestilence, disease and viruses are a terrible scourge upon human society especially when you consider that in the last fifty or so years various weapon development programs have been geared towards employing such on the modern battlefield. This film effectively takes that concept, the viral weapons and mates it with an environmental group that has a very extreme agenda, the elimination of the vast bulk of humanity…
Blue Ship is a group that have come to the conclusion that the world is going to hell in a hand basket, but what they have also concluded is that if they wipe out a significant amount of the world’s population say around 99% then the natural mechanisms of the ecosystem can finally kick in and being healing the damage that has been done. Rather extreme if you ask me, but then again it seems that extremism is all the rage nowadays, rational thought seems to be going the way of the mastodon, the dodo and good manners. Of course in order to pull this whole thing off Blue Ship needs to get its hands dirty and deal with some rather shifty characters so that the grand vision will be eventually realised and the earth reborn as some idyllic Eden.
Of course not everyone will be able to make it into the new improved paradise that the world will become, as with all such agendas only the select few will be chosen to survive into the new world. Makes you wonder though what kind of world such individuals would create if they ever succeeded, I doubt it would be filled with entertaining things such as Bleach, Naruto and beer and I sincerely doubt it would have any of the inspirational works of writers such as Shakespeare, Keats or even Omar Khayyam. Truly it would be a dour, colourless and bleak realm in which the very spark of creativity and imagination which inspires us would be snuffed out with no mercy. And I doubt whether the environment would be any better off.
So my soap boxing aside how does this movie rate? Well there are a few inconsistencies, but their effect on the overall drama of the film is relatively minor for my two cents worth. The main inconsistency concerns the destruction of a village in the deeps of Thailand, in the Chiang Mai region which is part of the infamous Golden Triangle area. What I was curious to know is just who the heck destroyed the village? Was it the Thai’s or was it the US or was it someone else entirely? Whoever it was they certainly had a lot of firepower at their disposal. The other inconsistency also concerns events in the village when a convoy of NBC suit wearing individuals show up on site ad start taking blood samples from the victims, who the heck are they? From inferences they don’t have any connection with the people who bomb the daylights out of the village but are they part of Blue Ship? Or are they someone entirely different. The final inconsistency is the use of English; every now and then you get a sudden spiel of English in the story which to my way of thinking jars with the rest of the dialogue that’s subtitled and in Japanese. It puts the story out of kilter.
Now if like myself you’ve seen the previous two Death Note live action films no doubt you’re wondering just how the heck can L be running around trying to prevent an extremist environmentalist plot to wipe out the bulk of humanity when he’s meant to have passed on from this mortal coil? This was a valid point that was raised with me a week or two ago at my local watering hole and at that point in time I had no answer. Having finally watched this film though I now know where it all fits into the grand scheme of things. After the events of the Death Note films L has twenty three days of mortal life left to him, this case falls into that twenty three day time period. Another way of looking at the film could be the last case of L. Or is it…
Kenichi Matsuyama as L is as convincing in the part as ever, frankly I don’t know whether anyone else could be able to reprise the role in a live action movie as he has it down pat. Here in this film though we see something of the human side of L, of the sides that we did not witness within the previous two films. Still despite finding himself a little out of his depth in some regards to the case that he has been landed with his resolve to bring the perpetrators to justice never once withers during the course of the unfolding story, even though he only has a limited time to live, in fact if anything that is what spurs him onwards and upwards. Perhaps it is the very realisation of his own mortality and the consequences of failure that gives him that drive to see things through and bring a just resolution to the matter at hand, namely preventing the loss of life on a grand scale and arresting the perpetrators.
Here again though I have to confess to being perplexed by the rating that the Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) has given this film, an MA 15 rating seems a bit over the top. This effectively means that L Change the World sits in the same category as anime such as Afro Samurai or Hellsing Ultimate, two works that are extremely and graphically violent, yet this is most assuredly not the case with L Change the World. In fact the violence here is no more than say what you would find in either Star Trek: The Future Beings or Terminator: Salvation both films which were given an M rating. So why give this one an MA 15 ? Always in motion the rationale of the OFLC is, hard to discern is the working of the OFLC…Ratings issues aside L Change the World is an enjoyable film although not as good as its two predecessor films.
Director: Hideo Nakata
Screenplay by: Hirotoshi Kobayashi
Producers: Tadashi Tanaka, Nobuhiro Iizuka & Takahiro Kobashi
Starring: Kenichi Matsuyama, Youki Kudoh, Mayuko Fukuda, Kiyotaka Nambara & Masanobu Takashima
Produced by: L Film Partners
Released by: Madman Entertainment
Running Time: 124 minutes Rating: MA 15
L, the man who frankly in my opinion is the twenty first century’s equivalent to Sherlock Holmes in his capacity as the world’s greatest detective once again reprises his role as the seeker of justice in this film. And he is once again confronted with an opponent who has megalomaniacal delusions about the world and the way in which it should be moulded to fit a particular vision. This time though, rather than employing a Death Note, his opponents have opted for something more conventional though no less destructive in achieving their objectives. In the Book of Revelations one of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse is Pestilence, disease and viruses are a terrible scourge upon human society especially when you consider that in the last fifty or so years various weapon development programs have been geared towards employing such on the modern battlefield. This film effectively takes that concept, the viral weapons and mates it with an environmental group that has a very extreme agenda, the elimination of the vast bulk of humanity…
So my soap boxing aside how does this movie rate? Well there are a few inconsistencies, but their effect on the overall drama of the film is relatively minor for my two cents worth. The main inconsistency concerns the destruction of a village in the deeps of Thailand, in the Chiang Mai region which is part of the infamous Golden Triangle area. What I was curious to know is just who the heck destroyed the village? Was it the Thai’s or was it the US or was it someone else entirely? Whoever it was they certainly had a lot of firepower at their disposal. The other inconsistency also concerns events in the village when a convoy of NBC suit wearing individuals show up on site ad start taking blood samples from the victims, who the heck are they? From inferences they don’t have any connection with the people who bomb the daylights out of the village but are they part of Blue Ship? Or are they someone entirely different. The final inconsistency is the use of English; every now and then you get a sudden spiel of English in the story which to my way of thinking jars with the rest of the dialogue that’s subtitled and in Japanese. It puts the story out of kilter.
Now if like myself you’ve seen the previous two Death Note live action films no doubt you’re wondering just how the heck can L be running around trying to prevent an extremist environmentalist plot to wipe out the bulk of humanity when he’s meant to have passed on from this mortal coil? This was a valid point that was raised with me a week or two ago at my local watering hole and at that point in time I had no answer. Having finally watched this film though I now know where it all fits into the grand scheme of things. After the events of the Death Note films L has twenty three days of mortal life left to him, this case falls into that twenty three day time period. Another way of looking at the film could be the last case of L. Or is it…
Kenichi Matsuyama as L is as convincing in the part as ever, frankly I don’t know whether anyone else could be able to reprise the role in a live action movie as he has it down pat. Here in this film though we see something of the human side of L, of the sides that we did not witness within the previous two films. Still despite finding himself a little out of his depth in some regards to the case that he has been landed with his resolve to bring the perpetrators to justice never once withers during the course of the unfolding story, even though he only has a limited time to live, in fact if anything that is what spurs him onwards and upwards. Perhaps it is the very realisation of his own mortality and the consequences of failure that gives him that drive to see things through and bring a just resolution to the matter at hand, namely preventing the loss of life on a grand scale and arresting the perpetrators.
Here again though I have to confess to being perplexed by the rating that the Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) has given this film, an MA 15 rating seems a bit over the top. This effectively means that L Change the World sits in the same category as anime such as Afro Samurai or Hellsing Ultimate, two works that are extremely and graphically violent, yet this is most assuredly not the case with L Change the World. In fact the violence here is no more than say what you would find in either Star Trek: The Future Beings or Terminator: Salvation both films which were given an M rating. So why give this one an MA 15 ? Always in motion the rationale of the OFLC is, hard to discern is the working of the OFLC…Ratings issues aside L Change the World is an enjoyable film although not as good as its two predecessor films.
| 40 |
| Vote |
subscribe to this blog
