Crush and Throw: Death Note | Review

Death Note had taken the anime world by storm when it released way back in 2003. Quickly gaining a cult following, and a massive approval rating of nearly 99% on nearly every review aggregator website, it was about time a film adaptation was made, and if its to gain international viewership, who better than America to produce it, and who better than Netflix to distribute it? And who better than a seasoned viewer to <YAWN> through the entire thing? Yeah, you get my drift.

Borrowing from the original story of the Manga/anime series, a genius high school student and recluse by the name of Light Turner finds a book titled ‘Death Note’ dropped by Ryuk, a Shinimagi (Japanese demon of death) with which one can kill anyone on the planet by just writing his name and mode of death on the book. Having misguided yet seemingly noble intentions, Light adopts the identity of Kira, and goes on a murderous spree, killing everyone and anyone he deems to be ill-fitted to exist in society, safely from the comfort of his desk. He enjoys his anonymity for some time, until an enigmatic detective ‘L’ takes up the challenge of revealing Kira’s true identity.

The original Death Note manga 

A good, just thing to do when evaluating such a movie, is to see how well it connects with a viewer being introduced to the story for the first time, and hasn’t seen the original manga, because an adaptation is rarely successful in keeping up with the standards set by the original and accordingly expected by the fanboys.  Death Note falls flat on its face, either way. Too much story has been tried to be cramped in between 1 hour and 40 minutes of runtime, and the result is a speeding train missing nearly all points of coherence. I know I said we should do otherwise, but if we talk about the original series, there is enough creative content to stretch out to at least 2 well engineered movies. The way the original manga skirted along the thin line between good and evil, moderate and extreme, eventually making us side with the conflicted murderer, is completely absent from the movie.

Nat Wolff as Light Turner

Nat Wolff, known for his performances in Paper Towns and The Fault in Our Stars plays the angsty teen, Light Turner. Where playing a good-natured, normally behaving boy seemed right up his alley, playing a self-righteous murderer doesn’t. Most of his performance is plastic, and he seems like the stereotypical weak teenager who’s angry at his father, gets beat up by bullies, and speaks at a flat single scale unless acting out, and there’s a LOT of acting out. Weird, random acting out. Rather than the genius his character was supposed to look like, he comes off more as a meticulous, socially awkward boy trying to find kicks in murder.

Ryuk, voiced by Willem Dafoe 

Willem Dafoe voices Ryuk, the Shinimagi who is the antagonist of the film and the series. A bored demon of death, he passes on his notebook to anyone and merely enjoys the show. Dafoe is probably my favourite choice for a negative character – the man’s voice has this natural creepy touch, it couldn’t work more perfectly. And he was the only redeeming factor in the character of Ryuk, a cheap CGI rendition of the original saga’s primary villain, who turns out to be more of a Sesame Street stock character, than the demon apathetic to any concerns of man and his world.

One aspect the film does fine is its cinematography and establishing the mystique around the detective ‘L’ played by Keith Stanfield, who appeared last in the Jordan Peele-directed film ‘Get Out’. He does fine. Just fine.

Verdict: 1 and a ½ / 5 toots of the bugle

You don’t need a Death Note to be able to passively kill someone. Show them this movie, and boredom will do it.