by Alex Goode
Death Note was a Shonen Jump manga that was first serialized in December of 2003. It tells the story of a man named Light who discovers a book that allows him to kill people, usually via heart attacks, just by writing down someone's name onto its pages. It became so popular that an anime based on the manga was created, with the first episode being released in October of 2006. The anime, from what I've seen of it, is awesome! It had excellent animation, very well-developed and iconic characters, great dialogue and voice-acting. But that isn't the version of Death Note that we're going to be discussing today. Nope, I'm talking about the 2017 Netflix-exclusive Death Note movie. I just got finished watching it, so now I will give my thoughts on it and determine whether or not I have to Throw The Harpoon at it!
Well, my initial thoughts once the credits started rolling were: "Wow, that was interesting." Now, before we go into it, please keep in mind that I haven't seen enough of the anime to make fully in-depth comparisons. That being said, I have seen enough of it to know that the movie was pretty lame. For example, the casting choices. Nat Wolff (who you might know from Paper Towns) plays Light Turner (originally called "Light Yagami" in the anime) in this movie. Not a bad actor by any means, he does a decent job portraying the character, but he's also not Japanese. Yeah, there's a lot of whitewashing in this movie. If you take that away from the cast, though, they still aren't very good. Yes, Nat does a decent Light, but that's it, aside from two examples. I'll get to those in a minute. Margaret Qualley plays Mia (not "Misa") here. Her performance comes across as cliche and uninteresting, so there isn't much to say about her. She's real pretty, though.
Now, let's move on to the characters themselves. Holy Jewish cuttlefish, what did Netflix do to these characters? Anime Light is a calm, cool, suave, hardworking individual. Netflix Light is a screaming, bumbling little baby who spends the majority of his screen time whining! Mia's attraction to Light sparks after witnessing him have a robber brutally murdered in front of her, as one does. I've already forgotten Watari's role in the movie. L's character was actually pretty cool, I don't have a problem with him. He wasn't a badly-represented character. Neither was Ryuk.
The soundtrack was bland and forgettable, the cinematography was decent, the pacing was meh. But, to be positive for a moment, Willem Dafoe's Ryuk was easily the best part of it. The character is designed as dark and mysterious and Willem gives him the perfect voice to match, Ryuk is extremely fun to watch in this movie because of the way he looks, the way he acts, the way he sounds. Yes, it's basically just Willem playing the Green Goblin again, but is there really anything wrong with that? I loved this movie's version of Ryuk. I also enjoyed L in this movie. Decently acted, he had distinguishable quirks, he did the squat thing when he sat in chairs. That's important.
I also think the kill scenes were creative and rather well-presented. Yeah, the amount of gore was gratuitous, but it was a little bit more exciting than the whole "everyone has a heart attack" thing that the anime did. One guy does die from a heart attack in the movie, though. Also, on the topic of effects, the scene with the Ferris Wheel collapsing looked amazing. And, while the cinematography does rely on the Dutch Angle shot a bit too much, when this movie wants to have a cool shot, it's gonna have a cool shot. And they gave Ryuk's love of apples some attention, which is good.
But, do the positives outweigh the negatives? I'm afraid not. Overall, the movie does have some merits to it. But not enough to save it. The first act is very slow and clunky, then it starts to pick up a little bit in the second act, but then it plummets straight into a river in the third act. I find Light being able to perfectly orchestrate the entire third act to be unbelievable. It's Death Note, not Dawn of Justice! Honestly, this movie is only worth seeing for Ryuk Dafoe. There's talk of a sequel to this movie. Who knows? Maybe Death Note 2: Electric Boogaloo will be good! We won't know until it happens. Until then, though, in regards to this movie? Yeah, I'm gonna Throw The Harpoon at it.
