There are few animes I enjoy. When I hear the word, there’s really only one show that comes to mind with any favor—Death Note. It’s a classic, dark story of mass murder, moral confusion and an otherworldly notebook that brings death upon anyone whose name is written in it. Young, grade-A student “Light Yagami” finds the notebook and, confronted by god of death and the book’s owner “Ryuk,” decides to use its power to eliminate all criminals on the planet, creating an ideal, perfect, morally utopic world. What a show.
Unfortunately for you, that’s not what I’m reviewing this week.
Instead I want to take a look at the American-made, Netflix-original, live-action Death Note movie. While Japanese filmmakers have been making live-action Death Note films for more than a decade, this was the first real attempt by American filmmakers to cash in on the anime’s adoring fanbase. With The Naked Brothers Band member Nat Wolff cast as Light, and eternal “Green Goblin” Willem Dafoe cast as Ryuk, the film was released in August 2017 to the universal nausea of critics and fans.
Let’s start with the positives. Dafoe was undoubtedly a perfect casting choice, something fans agreed on from the start. The man is basically a human cretin, and even without the CGI monster-face and devil-wings, I’d have no problem believing his face to be that of a god of death. The casting director made another perfect call in choosing actor/rapper Lakeith Stanfield as “L,” the ingenious detective tasked with chasing down Light. For one thing, it’s interesting to see L played by a POC, and Stanfield’s performance is by far the strongest in the film, taking L’s character to new places while still keeping anchored to the mannerisms fans know and love.
Other characters, however, are not so lucky. “Light Turner” is nowhere near the cold-blooded genius that Light Yagami was, and with his character responsible for some of the most laughable moments in the movie, taking him seriously is impossible from the get-go. “Mia Sutton,” Light’s girlfriend and attempted recreation of “Misa Amane,” comes out as a hackneyed “Lady Macbeth”-esque character, but with no motive other than teen angst.
Even the well-done characters still come out half-botched. While Ryuk’s performance is stellar, his persona is hindered by the fact that the filmmakers never fully reveal his face. They relentlessly hint and tease the viewer with small, shadowy glimpses, as if to build up to an amazing moment of revelation, but it never comes, making the whole game pointless.
Even L has his share of faulty moments as he becomes increasingly hostile, lashing out with random bursts of aggression that shatter the cool, levelheaded composure that made L so interesting to begin with.
Squeezing a 37-episode show into a 100-minute movie is an unwinnable game. Why Director Adam Wingard set himself up for this failure is beyond me. What the plastic acting and misguided portrayals don’t ruin is finished off by the impracticality of the plot itself. Death Note always was known for its dense and detailed rules that make its plot intricate and immersive—something that simply can’t be done inside one feature film. As a result, the 2017 Death Note watches like a thin, gutless attempt to recreate the dramatic heights of a show that extends miles and miles past the movie.
One should not approach a film adaptation with the expectation that it should 100 percent match the original source material. But, in an attempt at something new, Death Note leaves behind all the things that made the original show so cool in the first place and, replacing it with filler, plot holes and excessive gore, fails in the process.
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