Adaptations will always have their rough patches, no
matter the medium, but the one that I think has the hardest time is anime. Part of
it is the regular trials and tribulations, I.E. adapting a cartoon (that is
more than likely adapted from a manga) to live-action and condensing a
serialized narrative into a 2-hour movie, but a big part of it is also cultural
differences. I brought it up in passing during my review of Ghost in The Shell, but the reason I was
excited for the Death Note movie was
because even though it was rooted in Japanese societal issues, it’s still a universal
story that lends itself to adapting to issues on a global scale, hence why it
became a worldwide phenomenon. “What would you do if you had the power to kill
anyone anywhere with just a pen stroke?” is a definite morality stumper no
matter where you live. But usually these kinds of adaptations will live and die
by the team’s understanding of the source material, which unfortunately is the ultimate
downfall of Netflix’s Americanized version.
Our story follows Light Turner (Nat Wolff), a brilliant
young outcast with a strong sense of justice who is frustrated that the world
is so full of heinous people who don’t get their deserved comeuppance. One day,
he’s visited by Ryuk (Willem Dafoe), a bored death god who gives him a notebook
that kills anyone whose name is written in its pages, so long as it fits
within the rules. (And there are A LOT of rules.) After taking it for a test
run, Light decides to use the notebook’s powers to play judge, jury and
executioner with the world’s worst criminals. When the world notices that
someone is behind these killings and christen him with the moniker “Kira”, he and
his girlfriend Mia (Margaret Qualley) go on a power trip and hail themselves as
the gods of the new world. But Interpol aren’t buying it, and assemble a task
force consisting of the mysterious, eccentric detective L (Lakieth Stanfield)
and Light’s police commissioner father (Shea Whigham) to bring Kira down.
Unlike Ghost in The
Shell, Death Note is a series that I’m intimately familiar with, so I’m
able to scout out the major changes. The downside is that the changes sting a
lot more. Director Adam Wingard has said that he wanted to re-appropriate the
story to more modern concerns. Makes sense when you consider that a lot has
changed since the manga was first published in 2003, especially where social
justice is concerned. Sadly, I can’t say he met his goal. The anime and manga was
all about the cat and mouse game between Light and L, not just for their
clashing ideals and their pride ultimately overshadowing their goals, but in
how they were always one step away from checkmating each other. The movie
strips the intrigue to its barest bones, turning into an anemic mashup of Dexter, Donnie Darko, Final Destination, and Heathers, played out like an extended
previously-on segment from a mediocre detective procedural.
The biggest crime this movie commits isn’t the mass killings,
no matter how justifiable they may be, but the assassination of its characters
and premise. I get it. Sometimes changes need to be made to fit more naturally
into film. Hell, I wrote a whole essay about that. But the changes they do make
are at the cost of betraying everything that the series was about. In the
anime, Light is a genius who always stays one step ahead of his pursuers, a
master manipulator, and has a god complex that would make Donald Trump, Kim
Jong-Un and Kanye West look modest. By the end, the list of names in his Death
Note don’t just include criminals, terrorists and corrupt politicians, but
anyone and everyone who got in the way of his vision of a perfect world. He’s
the main character, but he is not the good guy. Here, Light does have moral reservations
about who he does and doesn’t kill (something at always bugged me about the
anime), but his motivation eventually switches from inflicting justice on the
deserving to impressing this girl he likes, who has way more in common with the
original Light than he does. She’s supposedly this version’s stand-in for the
character of Misa Amane. I would say she’s Misa in name only, but even that’s
not true.
But the saddest thing about this version is that it could’ve
been so much more. There are glimmers of brilliance that briefly breach the
surface, but are either immediately sidestepped or completely botched. Willem
Dafoe as Ryuk is one of the most perfect casting choices in the history of
perfect casting choices, even if they don’t give him much to do besides sit in
the shadows, gobble up apples, explain the rules of the Death Note and punch
holes in Light’s plans. They also do a mostly brilliant job with L. L is a
weird character. He’s just as brilliant and ambitious as Light, but you’d never
guess that from looking at him. He looks like he never sleeps or showers, his
social skills are nonexistent, he sits and holds things in an odd way, and his
diet consists almost entirely of sugar. But when it comes to detective work,
there’s no match. He’s able to figure out that Light is Kira pretty quickly,
but never had the proof to throw the book at him. Lakieth Stanfield nails L’s
quirks and mannerisms, and his blunt, matter-of-fact methods of getting what he
wants. It’s easily one of the movie’s sole redeeming factor… for the most part.
About halfway through, after a certain character goes missing, his entire
character changes and goes off the rails. Believe or not, this character break
is a metaphor for the whole movie.
Overall, Death Note
is the biggest waste of potential I’ve seen in a long time, and another sad
addition to the list of failed anime adaptations. It’s not nearly as awful as Dragonball Evolution or The Last Airbender, but it’s on par with
Ghost in The Shell in how close it
got before faltering. Wingard is known for his work in horror (You’re Next and The Guest both come highly recommended, by the way), which is especially
evident in some of the over-the-top, gory deaths that Light assigns to those he
kills. Too bad he doesn’t have the same knack for drama or intrigue, especially
when it’s handed to him on a silver platter.
4/10
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