Death Note

From the moment Death Note was announced as the next film for director Adam Wingard, I was intrigued. I was a big fan of his previous films, You're Next and The Guest so naturally I was curious what his adaptation of the popular Japanese manga and anime series would be like. As I sat watching it, a wave of disappointment actually began to come over me as the film unfolded. A film with such a rich premise shouldn't be so...flat. 

Light Turner (played by Nat Wolff) is a high school student and a bit of an outcast. He is currently mourning the recent death of his mother and lives with his father, police detective James Turner (played by Shea Whigham). One day, a weathered old notebook literally falls out of the sky and lands next to him. He picks it up and discovers that the notebook is a Death Note. Within this book there is inscribed a set of rules. Basically, the owner of the book can write the name of any person they want to in the book and that person will die. They can even dictate the manner in which the person dies. Along with the book comes a death demon named Ryuk (played by Willem Dafoe), who urges Light to use the book. After testing it out on a particularly nasty school bully, Light decides to use it to deliver the ultimate punishment to criminals that escape the reach of the law. When a classmate, Mia (played by Margaret Qualley) notices Light and asks what he's up to he lets her in on his secret and the two of them team up to deliver their own brand of justice under the moniker Kira. This catches the attention of mysterious detective who only goes by L (played by Lakeith Stanfield), who is determined to catch the killer known as Kira.

Adam Wingard directed the film working from a script by Charley Parlapanides, Vlas Parlapanides, and Jeremy Slater. This film is a unique example of how a director's instincts can sometimes work against the film they are trying to make. It is a competently directed film and I could tell that Wingard was trying to tell a compelling story. However, there are some very curious stylistic and storytelling choices. The main problem is the film feels too short. I never really got attached to the characters in the way that I should have and it lacks any of the dramatic weight that the material should have had. We move too fast from Light getting the Death Note to his first use of the book to his decision to use it to kill all the criminals. I really felt there needed to be more build up to it and that his descent into using the book repeatedly should have been more gradual. Instead, it is glossed over in a montage and we basically instantly go from Light as a normal high school student to total sociopath in no time at all. The other curious choice is the film's insistence on Light remaining a heroic character when the material is crying out for a moment of realization from Light at the end, not unlike Michael Douglas in Falling Down, where he realizes he's become the villain. 

Most of all, what I missed most was the cat and mouse game between Light and L. In the anime series, both Light and L were extremely intelligent people with Light trying to elude L and keep him from discovering he was Kira. In this film, none of that was apparent. L is clearly the far more intelligent of the two and manages to find Light remarkably quickly (so fast, in fact, that it strains credibility). L also makes some big deductions (which turn out to be right) but doesn't bother to explain how L was able to figure those things out, which left me scratching my head. This played out so much better in the original anime with each character trying to outwit the other. I watched the anime back when it first came out, so my memory of it is a little fuzzy and I deliberately didn't rewatch it because I wanted to judge the film on it's own terms. What I do remember is the battle of wits between L and Light being some of the best parts of the show and something this film seriously lacked. 

The film does have a couple inspired casting choices though. Willem Dafoe is great a Ryuk, the Death Demon that urges Light to keep using the book and delights in the mayhem Light unleashes. Dafoe was a fantastic choice for the role and it is one that he is clearly having a ball with. Ryuk is a fun character in a dark and twisted way, just enjoying watching how a human uses the power to kill anyone they want. The only downside is Ryuk is in the film far too little and there are far too large segments in the film without him. The film literally has a demon whispering in a kids ear telling him to commit murders. That's dark and twisted stuff and absolutely should have been explored more in the film, especially when you have a great actor such as Dafoe in the role. The other great casting choice is Lakeith Stanfield as L. He does a great job as the enigmatic detective who is a brilliant detective, sleeps little, indulges in too much sugar and likes to sit hunched over. He is so wonderfully compelling in the role, it's a shame the movie around him isn't better. The rest of the cast is decent in their roles. A lot has been written other places on the internet about the whitewashing of the cast, especially in a film whose subject matter directly pulls from Japanese culture, that I really don't feel I need to re-iterate it here when it's been done better elsewhere on the net. 

Another curious choice in the film is the soundtrack. Adam Wingard is known for making interesting choices for music in his film, especially the techno and synth heavy soundtrack for The Guest. In this one, the soundtrack is populated with 80's soft rock music songs such as Chicago's "I Don't Want to Live Without Your Love" and Air Supply's "The Power of Love" that seem to work directly against the tone of the film. While I enjoyed the songs on their own, they really did not work within the film to either give emotional weight or add mood to the film. Instead it took me out of the film, causing me wonder why Berlin's "Take My Breath Away" was in the film. 

In the end, Death Note is not a total dumpster fire of a movie. It has some interesting stylistic choices, a couple of great performances and doesn't completely squander it's premise. However, it is a disappointingly mediocre movie that fails to realize the true potential of its intriguing premise and instead plays it fairly predictable before devolving completely into bad YA fiction. Which is a shame, really.