The plot: Light Turner (Nat Wolff) is just your average high
school student. That is, until he discovers a notebook called the Death Note, a
tool of the death gods where if a person’s name is written within, that person dies. Wanting to use this power for good, he is encouraged by the death god
Ryuk (Willem Dafoe) to rid the world of crime using the Death Note, becoming
known as Kira. However, as Light’s father (Shea Whigham) is called on to
investigate the series of mysterious deaths, and a mysterious detective
(Lakeith Stanfield) is brought in to assist, Light’s mission is about to get a
whole lot tougher.
Nat Wolff is about as miscast as you can get for our main
character. Not only is the guy far too shrill to engage under the right
circumstances, he also isn’t able to make the character’s sporadic bouts of
genius feel like they fit his persona. By contrast, Willem Dafoe as the
manipulative god of death is perfect
casting, and the way he lets the sheer menace of his character drip through
every syllable he utters makes for a very fun performance. Margaret Qualley as
Light’s love interest Mia not only seems to be the most in-touch with the tone
of the original work, her attitudes and actions within the narrative make her
out to be the character we should be
focusing on as opposed to Light. Considering she’s sharing the name of one of
the manga’s most annoying characters, that is quite a feat.
Shea Whigham as
Light’s father works out okay, if a bit bland, Paul Nakauchi was a damn good
pick to play Watari, although maybe not the version we get here, and Stanfield
as the master detective L gets a lot of the character’s best-remembered
mannerisms down, but he is unable to keep that momentum going for the entire
film. By the time we reach the final reel, he ends up joining everyone else in
how needlessly in-flux his character is.
If you’re looking for a faithful adaptation of the original
manga in any form, then you’ll likely be a bit disappointed by what we get.
While the skeleton of the story is still the same, with a high school student
finding the means to rid the world of perceived evil, a lot of the specifics
have been shifted around. Light has gone from being a cunning puppet master who
goes through ridiculously elaborate means to keep himself hidden into a
try-hard emo kid who ends up getting played with more than he ever ends up
playing others. L has shades of the genius detective he’s most recognised as,
but he is now also far more skittish and no longer the calmest and most
confident person in the room. Mia carries no trace of her manga counterpart
Misa, forgoing idealistic and unrequited love for a perspective that shows the
most understanding of both the Death Note itself and what it is capable of in
“the right hands”. And Light’s father, who once had a pragmatic insistence that
some people shouldn’t have this kind of power at their disposal, is now so
compromised that it’s genuinely surprising that he even manages to survive for
as long as he does.
However, none of that is ultimately the issue. After all,
pretty much every single adaptation involves changing around the details in
order to either fit a completely different medium or to fit a creative’s
differing take on the material. Where the problem comes in is with how much of
the story isn’t changed. We still
have Light being egged on by Ryuk to become a vigilante and take care of the
world’s criminals. We still have L being brought in to help track him down. We
still have the myriad of rules associated with the Death Note, with only one or
two left out for plot convenient reasons. If this was a pure attempt to tell a
fresh story based on an old framework, I would be fine with it, even as a
die-hard fan of the original material.
Instead, this film feels like it’s torn
between staying true to the source and verging off in its own direction. We
don’t get the same insanely intricate battle of wits between Light and L, one
of the best parts of the original story, but instead the trials and
tribulations of a high school kid. Not a mastermind that could change the world
to fit his image, but just a kid with a lot of supernatural power behind him.
To say that this is a far less interesting take would be underselling the fact
that, somewhere in here, there is a far better idea.
Here’s where things get tricky: As the film stretches on,
you start to wonder why it holds onto as much as it does. With just a few
re-writes, and a slight bit of discomfort at not including Ryuk in the picture,
this very easily could have been its own story. Not a direct adaptation but
more of a spin-off taking place in the same narrative universe. And with the
changes made, that actually could have worked. Rather than focusing on
elaborate mind games, the film seems far more interested in the inherent moral
gymnastics of the concept; how does the ability to kill with this much freedom
affect the human mind? Especially the mind of a teenager, where elements like
peer pressure and bullying can factor into how the Death Note is used. It may
not be the story that we all know and love, but it would at least show a
willingness to play around with the idea.
Unfortunately, that attempt is held
back by how it still wants to be a story about Kira bending the world to its
twisted sense of justice, something that seems at odds with who Kira ultimately
is according to this film. As a result, the parts unique to this film and the
parts inherited from the source material end up clashing in rather
disheartening ways, resulting in an experience where neither the filmmakers nor
the audience really know what the ultimate point of all this is.
All in all, this is an absolute mess of an adaptation. The
acting ranges from head-tilted to perfectly on-target, the direction shows Adam
Wingard has a definite idea on how to leave his own stamp on the story, the
music choices seem to get progressively worse as the film goes on, but it’s the
writing that is the biggest problem. The script by Charles and Vlas
Parlapanides, with a revision by Jeremy Slater, can’t seem to make its mind up
on whether it wants to be a faithful adaptation of the original manga or a
brand-new story set in the same world. Because of that conflict, the film comes
out incredibly uneven and far harder to gel with than it really should be. Even
as someone who is more than willing to defend Wingard’s last feature Blair Witch, I can’t deny that this just plain doesn’t work.
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