Two Cents is an original column akin to a book club for films. The Cinapse team will program films and contribute our best, most insightful, or most creative thoughts on each film using a maximum of 200 words each. Guest writers and fan comments are encouraged, as are suggestions for future entries to the column. Join us as we share our two cents on films we love, films we are curious about, and films we believe merit some discussion.
The Pick
For years, Death Note existed in the same development netherworld where still dwell anime and/or manga titles like Akira, Cowboy Bebop, or Ninja Scroll. Hugely successful in Japan and cultishly adored by Western audiences, it makes sense that Hollywood would believe there was gold to be mined in them there hills.
But much like Ghost in the Shell, by the time Death Note finally made the jump from page to screen to American screen, courtesy of director Adam (You’re Next/The Guest/Blair Witch) Wingard, it’s debatable whether or not the boulder was worth pushing up the hill.
Unassuming-but-brilliant high school student Light (Nat Wolff) has his world turned upside down when one day a strange notebook drops out of the sky. This is the Death Note, and with it comes both the power to kill anyone whose name and face Light knows, and a demonic attendant, Ryuk (Willem Dafoe). Light opts to use the Death Note to purge the world of evildoers and offer humanity a new god to love, taking the alias “Kira”. But his plans are thrown off by the investigation into Kira’s crimes by both an enigmatic detective known only as “L” (Lakeith Stanfield) and Light’s own father (Shea Whigham). Add in a wild card love interest (Margaret Qualley), an unruly Ryuk, and a bunch of Final Destination-ish splatter deaths, and things get pretty crazy for Light very quickly.
With accusations of white-washing and cultural erasure, along with the usual questions surrounding adaptation, critical knives were out for Death Note before it ever so much as hit the Netflix home page. So we decided to ask our team and our guests whether Death Note was worth the translation or if this book needs to be closed. — Brendan
Next Week’s Pick:
Years in the making, the revival of Twin Peaks mobilized fans and reminded audiences that David Lynch is an absolute force to be reckoned with. In honor of the completion of Twin Peaks: The Return, we’re going back to Lynch’s similarly stylish 1986 noir mystery Blue Velvet, which also features Twin Peaks star Kyle MacLachlan. It’s available to stream on Amazon Prime. — Austin
Would you like to be a guest in next week’s Two Cents column? Simply watch and send your under-200-word review to twocents(at)cinapse.co anytime before midnight Thursday!
Our Guests
I’m not an anime guy. Or a manga guy. So while I was vaguely aware of Death Note as a thing, I have no real frame of reference for what it’s supposed to be. That said, as much as I wanted to like it this Americanized film version just doesn’t stick the landing. The tone feels uncertain throughout. Almost everything involving Willem Dafoe’s character suggests a certain level of camp, but elsewhere the film seems to want its subject to be taken seriously. It also feels like the story races from plot point to plot point, like it’s trying to cover way more ground than it should in a single feature. The effect is something like a Cliff’s Notes version of Death Note, where character motivation and emotion are secondary to hitting the necessary story beats.
There are some interesting ideas that ultimately remain undeveloped, such as the quasi-religious devotion to Kira or the mysterious origins of “L.” As the film goes on, the number of required contrivances to hold the narrative together increase exponentially, and by the film’s climactic slow motion, pop/rock-scored scene on top of a Ferris wheel, I wasn’t sure if my uncontrollable laughter was the appropriate or intended response. Also, I’m more than a little uncomfortable with the premise of the film, which requires of its teenage protagonists a level of cynicism and outright sociopathy that I frankly find upsetting.
Finally, the film doesn’t end so much as it comes screeching to a halt. The closing scene feels like it’s kicking off a whole new act or story arc, but instead the credits start to roll. I know the plan is for more of these, but Death Note fails to resolve any of its major threads in a satisfying way. I’ve certainly seen worse movies, but Death Note’s sin isn’t in its badness, but in its mediocrity. Not even Willem Dafoe as a Faustian death god could save it. (@T_Lawson)
Richard Allen
It seems true to me that when people read reviews for films they’re looking for an answer to one of two questions; “Will I enjoy this movie?” or “Was my impression of this movie correct?” and if you’re looking to watch it after having seen the series I think it’s safe to say that the answers with respect to Death Note are no and yes, respectively.
Death Note might be scored differently on its own merits but it’s difficult for me to see that having seen the series already. Indeed, there were many inherent challenges bringing this to film; not the least of which is adapting a some-12 hour series down to a feature length film. It does a capable job of condensing a lot of story down to just a couple hours. But they spent so long wondering if they could the never stopped to consider if they should.
Death Note proper is a story about a few things but notably a question of what it means to be good or evil, corruption, and a cat & mouse/mouse & cat game of logic and wit between two masters. The film only gives you the highlights. That doesn’t mean it’s worthless. It does an admirable job of condensing the series down into a single story while still ultimately missing the mark.
Should you watch this film? Not if you haven’t seen the series. If you have seen the series, is your impression of the film correct? Almost certainly. If you haven’t seen the series, just load that up on Netflix.
As for the film itself, it’s really not awful. It’s easy to find worth in watching it if for nothing else than to see how the series is transliterated. But it whiffs on the things that the series wants to give you and strictly as a film it misses a proper inciting incident that would make the climax stand out as a cathartic change. It captures the cleverness inherent to the series but little more than superficially. It also has to hurry to make a climax work in a way that just does not balance with the rest of the film.
The casting of Light as a white guy was controversial but also the actor just doesn’t do it for me. The rest of the cast though, I thought was amazing. Willem Defoe KILLS IT as Ryuk. Lakeith Stanfield as L is INSPIRED. Shea Wingam as the father is AMAZING. But the film should have stayed in Japan. You could even keep most of the cast.
Final grade: Watch the series. If, then, you find yourself bored the film isn’t a total waste of time; but it is disappointing and, if you’re like me, will just make you want to watch the series again. Which I did. (@AllanArkay)
The Team
First and foremost, a person should never have to walk away from social media because of threats on his or her life, especially based on making a piece of art. There may be an argument for exceptions based on extremely hate-filled art, such as white power music or propaganda with the intent of inciting physical harm. However, Adam Wingard isn’t guilty of creating this type of art. The controversy surrounding his art is mostly manufactured bullshit with little actual substance. The film is adapted to take place in the United States, thus changing some of the ethnicities of the main characters. The cries that the adaptation is an example of “whitewashing” should be shot down for a number of reasons, it’s simply an adaptation based in a new locale. Wingard and crew did not cast a white man to play a Middle Eastern man — i.e. Ridley Scott’s obviously whitewashed casting of Exodus — nor did they stick to a cast without diversity. The accusations ring false and the price paid by Wingard in dealing with these feels unjust.
The rage was equally heaped on by angry nerds who thought the adaptation of the original story was simply shit, too. Angry nerd rage coming out as death threats is, of course, equally unacceptable. While the adaptation may or may not have been done well, people need to chill the fuck out. Even if the accusations of whitewashing are wholly legit, the death threats are unacceptable.
I could write for pages on how Twitter, especially Film Twitter and Nerd Twitter, is a toxic shithole much of the time, but instead I’ll move forward and just say that I liked Death Note. I didn’t love it, but I appreciated a lot of the visuals, loved most of the acting, and thought it was a great introduction to the story. As a non-fan of the anime and manga, I have no comparison, really. I am not familiar with much of the story. My biggest issue was that it felt like far too much was jammed into the runtime; it felt like it should have either done less or been a mini-series rather than a feature film. Yet, even with this complaint, I enjoyed the film and will certainly revisit it. (@ThePaintedMan)
What is Death Note? Is it a splattery bit of fun? A campy live action cartoon? A portentous meditation on humanity’s desire for a savior? On teenagers’ misunderstanding and misuse of power? A tragedy of good intentions gone wrong? A black comedy with a wink in its eye? A cat and mouse detective thriller with a supernatural bent?
Choose any random five minute segment of Death Note and you would think it’s one of these. Choose another five and it’s one of the others. I don’t know this manga or series, but in pacing and problems, Death Note recalled that Last Airbender movie that M. Night crapped out pre-comeback. They couldn’t crack how to condense something huge and sprawling into a feature film so they opted to try and cram as much plot and incident as humanly possible and apparently never gave a thought to how/if it flowed together.
You get the sense that Wingard knows that the story wasn’t properly configured to this format, so he compensates by just flinging style into his frame. And the man can compose a shot and cut a sequence, no question. With material like Stanfield’s gonzo detective L, Death Note fleetingly captures a manic sense of abandon, like goth culture’s answer to Speed Racer.
But none of that style can make up for the substance that just isn’t there, especially since Wolff, who I’m sure has been well-used in other stuff, is a black hole at the center of this film. He’s woefully miscast, immediately unlikable, and resolutely false in almost every key emotional scene.
A real shame. Hopefully Wingard has better luck when he pits King Kong against Godzilla. (@TheTrueBrendanF)
Apparently I’m the only one in the club who really dug this. Wingard’s sense of style is intact in his latest movie, and that alone is enough to warrant a watch.
First, the whitewashing accusations seem completely unfounded and reactionary. American remakes of Asian works happen all the time, and that’s exactly what this is. It’s a transplanted western realization of an Asian concept, and no more deserving of cultural reprimand than The Departed, The Magnificent Seven, The Ring, Godzilla, A Fistful of Dollars, The Lake House, etc.
I’m not familiar with the prior anime or live action treatments, so that absence of of baggage is probably working in my favor. I know it’s based on a much larger body material, and some of that truncation definitely comes across. The Death Note’s background, L’s mysterious origin, and the cult of Kira are all interesting ideas that get cursory treatment; but in its defense the film gives a taste of that weirdness rather than jettisoning it completely.
The concept is intriguing, the pace feverish, the stakes high, the violence welcome, and the ambiguous ending haunting. Willem Dafoe is particularly great in a role that if both reminiscent of and better than his Green Goblin. As an outsider to the material, this felt fresh to me. (@VforVashaw)
Watch it on Netflix:
Next Week’s Pick: