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Based on a Japanese manga, Death Note kicks off like Ringu, with law student L. (Ken’ichi Matsuyama) discovering a notebook that knocks off anyone whose name he writes in its pages. Honourably, he decides to exterminate Japan’s criminals, but pretty soon the cops, led by his police chief dad, catch onto his antics. They hire the mysterious Light (Tatsuya Fujiwara), a sullen teen with a deductive mind to rival Sherlock Holmes’, to catch him. Then the Angel of Death – a grinning CG Joker in rock band duds – pops up to give L. advice about the art of killing. There’s more, but you probably wouldn’t believe it… Endlessly inventive, knowingly silly and pirouetting on a mouth-watering cliffhanger (the sequel’s already out in Nippon), this is a bona fide Japanese original.
