Death Note 2017: An Unmitigated Disaster

8/25/2017

Light Turner finds the titular notebook

Adaptations are rarely a positive thing in the west. Hollywood has long been known for its predilection to Americanizing anything foreign that they can get their hands on. Remember Ghost in the Shell? I think we're all still trying to forget. So you understand my bias as a reviewer right from the start, let me clarify a few things: I am a fan of the Death Note manga and anime, and I was against casting white actors in these roles from the start. I'm also usually not too hard on movies because, hey, it's just a two-hour piece of entertainment built for a wide audience. Sometimes I like bad movies. They can be fun. Netflix's new adaptation of Death Note almost falls into that category. Because, before I even get into the review, I'll preface with this: Death Note is a bad movie. Ahead, I'll go over the plot in detail and explain what's good and bad. Needless to say, SPOILER ALERT. Scroll to the bottom for a final spoiler-free verdict.

Spoilers Begin Here

Our protagonist is the moody teenage math whiz Light Turner, who does other students' homework for money. We're also introduced to moody teenager #2, the cheerleader Mia Sutton, who makes Meaningful Eye Contact with Light early on so we know she's important. Light finds the Death Note in much the same way as the original, on the ground at school after it falls from the sky. After Light stupidly picks a fight with a bully and gets pummeled for his trouble, he's sent to detention for all the contraband homework the teachers found him with. It's here that he meets Ryuk.

Originally, Ryuk was a casual bystander. He would watch, he would laugh, but he would never interfere until he had to. This time around, Ryuk is a scheming creature fittingly voiced by the ever-talented Willem Dafoe. He pushes Light to use the Death Note on the bully from earlier, to which Light only puts up minor resistance. "I don't have a pen. Good thing you have a pen." I groaned. The bully's death is a gory decapitation, leaving Light in shock as Ryuk disappears and leaves him with a messy classroom. Don't worry, it cuts to the next scene so he doesn't have to explain what happened. Fun side note: Light Yagami is calm and collected, able to understand Ryuk's existence without much effort. Light Turner screams, bangs on the door, and whimpers in the corner before ultimately being coerced into becoming a killer by the decidedly more evil American Ryuk.

The detention classroom is a bit of a mess after Ryuk's visit

Light's dad, James Turner, is a cop. We learn that Light has a distrust of justice and the police force after his mother was killed some years ago, and the killer walked free. The strain on Light's relationship with his dad is clear, but unfortunately is inconsistent throughout the film. Spurred on by Ryuk, Light makes the decision to finally kill the man he hates the most, the criminal who killed his mother without consequence. In another gory scene, we see the killer impale himself on a steak knife.

Light formally meets Mia while he's reading the Death Note's rules during gym. It takes mere seconds for him to go from "I must protect this secret at all costs" to "let me show you how I killed that bully". Light and Mia bond over their mutual desire to kill criminals, and there's a whole montage of them making out and killing people left and right. It's not long before they become infamous.

Let's talk about Kira. In the source material, Kira is a name given to Light by the public. It doesn't really mean anything, instead being a Japanese transliteration of the word "killer". Kira is admired in the public eye as a god, come to strike down the worst of society and save the world in the process. While Light Turner's Kira isn't that far off from Yagami's, there is one major difference which paints them in an entirely different light: Light Turner chooses the name himself. Kira, he says, means "light" in Russian (it doesn't). It also means "killer" in Japanese (again, it doesn't). He figures that authorities will assume he's Japanese, and will never find him in Seattle. This is... well, pretty bad writing, to be blunt. Get the translations wrong in your whitewashed film, then decide that your protagonist should blame his murder spree on Japan? Cool, Netflix. He has some of his victims write "Kira" in Japanese before they die, solidifying his plot in the eyes of global authorities. Unfortunately for Light and Mia, they're about to run into one authority they can't fool.

There's that classic L logo

James, being one of the only cops who stands against Kira, is contacted by the mysterious international detective L. Through L's assistant Watari, James meets with the enigmatic figure and it's about as awkward as you'd expect. Don't get me wrong, L's portrayal in this film is one of the strongest points of the entire production, but his introduction? L's animated mannerisms don't translate well to live action. The chair-crouch, the way he holds paper by the corner, his obsession with sweets... they all come off as silly. L may have appeared a bit silly in the original too, but he owned up to it. This L is very serious. It's a weird tone to set.

L's mannerisms can best be described as "awkward", sort of like the rest of this movie

Light and Mia argue about how to handle this new threat; Mia wants to kill cops (Light, with his familial relation to the police force, is being followed as a potential suspect) while Light refuses to kill innocents. When CIA agents start dropping dead, (with a fantastically horrifying scene where a bunch of them walk off a roof together), Light blames Ryuk - he thinks Ryuk just wants to watch the world burn. After a feeble threat by Light to write Ryuk's name down in the Death Note, Ryuk simply responds "there are four letters in my name, the furthest anybody has ever gotten is two". Ryuk never denies killing the agents, and Light's hatred for him grows. To make matters worse, James makes a public statement, clearly setting himself up as a target for Kira. When he doesn't die, L comes to the conclusion in a heartbeat - Light Turner is Kira. James could have seen that himself, with the way Light's been acting this whole movie, but James apparently isn't a very good cop, I guess? That's the only possible explanation.

Beautiful shot, but why is Light just so....... clueless?

L confronts Light pretty quickly, and Light does absolutely nothing to protect his identity. If anything, he just further implicates himself with vague mentions of what he thinks Kira might want. He asks L why he doesn't just arrest him on the spot. L's answer? "I don't do check - only checkmate". I do like this version of L, honestly. Awkward intro aside, he's a fun character. One other thing that happens at this meeting - L shows Light his face. This would be a problem, if Light wasn't just so inept at everything he did.

Light uses the Death Note (including a loophole where a burned page will cancel out the death of whoever's name is on it, provided it gets burned before they die) to force Watari to dig up information on L. Top priority is his real name. Watari digs deep into the orphanage where L was raised, a backstory pretty faithful to the source material. Too bad we don't ever get to see Near or Mello in this movie. Around here, things start to get muddy. What are Ryuk's motives? What are Mia's motives? It's all a bit up in the air as L reaches his breaking point. When he notices Watari's disappearance, he confronts Light and James in their own house. James refuses to believe Light is Kira, but L brings a search warrant. In a moment of desperation brought on by Light's use of Watari's name, L assaults him before being held back by James. An incredibly out-of-character moment for the classic L, but a believable and emotional turning point for American L. Too bad his relationship with Watari is never explored again, seeing as how this is an entire season of anime wrapped up in a single film.

This ruthless serial killer doesn't seem so ruthless when held at gunpoint

So there's this whole mess. Watari is out looking for L's name, Light and Mia are secretly plotting against one another (they actually individually wrote each other's names in the Death Note as insurance, planning to destroy the pages once they got their way). The destruction of either of those pages would cancel out the possibility of destroying Watari's page, as Ryuk explains that only one name can be canceled out in this way. It doesn't matter too much, though - Light leaves Watari's method of death up to Ryuk, figuring that he'll cancel it out soon enough. As Watari finds L's name and calls Light to let him know, a task force of cops bursts through the door and guns him down. Light returns to Mia at the homecoming dance they were using for cover, defeated. L hears news of Watari's death, and this is where things get even wilder.

L chases Light down and eventually holds him at gunpoint. There are two factions in the police, those looking for L at James's request and those looking for Light at L's request. Staring down the barrel of L's gun, Light starts to open up about the Death Note. He gets about as far as mentioning a calculus book (a throwaway line, really, but one that sticks with L) before worker from a nearby restaurant walks into the scene. L explains that it's police business and that Light is Kira. The worker knocks L out with a big chunk of wood, a Kira supporter himself. Light runs off to meet Mia at the docks and get on a ferris wheel. At this point I don't even know why they were meeting. I guess they were trying to get away from the cops? It's pretty flimsy. Either way, they get up on top of the ferris wheel and start to fight when they find out about their individual murder plots. Cops surround them below as suddenly the entire ferris wheel gives way, Mia falls to her death, and Light falls into the ocean. This is all revealed to be part of Light's grand strategy, some huge thing he wrote about about how Mia would die and he would be saved by a doctor and... man, it's all over the place.

With Light in a coma, and Kira killings still going on, L's operation is shut down by the police. Just before he leaves, though, he remembers the mention of a calculus book. Light wasn't in calculus, was he? What about Mia? He hatches a plan that the audience doesn't get to know about yet. We're now in the final stretch of this mess. I'm actually enjoying L's arc, and this seems like the ultimate redemption for his failure.

The face of a man determined to end this movie in any way he can

Waking up from his coma, Light comes face to face with James. His father sits on the bed and reveals the newspaper clipping Light used to kill that murderer in the beginning - a clipping James had kept locked in a safe. This apparently is enough evidence for James to finally understand that his son is Kira. Apparently, though, he just sorta... doesn't care? He still loves his son, after all. He asks about the details, and Light describes his entire plan, and how he wrote himself into a coma and planned the other Kira killings around it to take the blame off himself and plant it on some other criminal. This was very fast and poorly explained and led nowhere. L, on the other hand, enters Mia's room. Inside her calculus book, he finds the page she stole and used to kill all those FBI agents - Ryuk never killed anybody after all, but Light wouldn't get to see that. L understands in an instant how it works, and decides to write Light's name down - but he stops. Why does he stop? Well, back at the hospital, Ryuk appears to Light and laughs. He says "humans are so interesting". Finally, the big reveal: roll credits.

Wait, what?

Yeah, that's right. After that sloppy mess of a movie, they didn't even see fit to give it an ending. Does L kill Light? Who knows? Will there be a sequel? It hasn't been confirmed, but maybe? Maybe Near and Mello will get their Netflix debut after all? That's the only possible way this ending could be saved. It's an insult to the viewers who sat through that almost-two-hour flaming garbage heap and expected any kind of closure. Mia's dead, James and L both know without a doubt that Light is Kira, but Light isn't brought to justice. He isn't defeated, and neither is L. It ends on the most unsatisfying possible cliffhanger Hollywood could muster.

End of Spoilers

Death Note 2017 is a mess, plain and simple. For returning fans of the franchise it's a sad joke, and for newcomers it's an unsatisfying and bloated excuse for a thriller. Willem Dafoe portrays an excellent Ryuk which, due to the disgustingly cheap CGI, is rarely ever seen on-screen. Nat Wolff and Margaret Qualley (Light and Mia, respectively) are awkward and overly dramatic. Keith Stanfield's L is the shining savior of this trainwreck, an enigmatic and deeply conflicted character who leaves the audience with a burning need for more exposition. Everybody else does a pretty decent job. Masi Oka even has a short cameo as a detective. For a second I thought he was gonna be Watari, but that went to the older and more stoic Paul Nakauchi who did a fine job.

The cinematography was beautiful. Shot for shot, Death Note is a pleasure to look at. The mise-en-scène is so carefully constructed, and we get some really incredible shots here. Adding to the aesthetic is the 80s-tinged synth pop soundtrack, reminiscent of recent hits like Netflix's own Stranger Things. As with all of their original work, aesthetic is once again proven to be the strongest aspect of Netflix's production. I'll ignore the moments of poorly-aged angst dumps since the original Death Note wasn't without its own edgy Hot Topic flair.

I sorta enjoyed myself watching this movie. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's good, and really I don't think it's even worth wasting your time on. The story is so disorienting and convoluted, and there's no payoff to be seen. Still, as a Death Note fan, I had fun re-entering the world. If anything, it makes me want to re-read the manga or re-watch the anime. My final verdict is that Netflix's Death Note is an absolute waste of time and money, a sorry excuse at adapting a beloved franchise which falls flat on its face in a heartbeat. It has no bite, it has no soul, it's just pretty to look at and imagine what could have been. Netflix, and Hollywood as a whole, I desperately hope the overwhelmingly negative response to this film will get you to reconsider your stance on adaptations. Unfortunately, I don't think that will be the case.

If you're looking for some live-action Death Note, I've been told that the drama (available on Crunchyroll) is a much better alternative. You can also watch the anime, another unfaithful and sorta messy adaptation of the manga which at least had some character and charm. If nothing else, it's fun to watch. A huge manga box set is coming out next month, too. Just do yourself a favor and stay away from this movie.

-Justin

Seriously?

Comments