That being said, the film kept me entertained all the way through.
#Willem dafoe death note movie#
The final scenes of the movie have the main characters unravelling quickly, and by the time the end credits roll, nothing feels resolved.
Too much happens in too short of a time, and we can’t process everything the way the original material wants us to. His reaction is out of place and feels inauthentic.ĭeath Note’s biggest problem is the film’s pacing. L loses his mind when Watari is murdered, but we don’t see any concrete connection between these two characters. Light manipulates L’s mentor and guardian, Watari (Paul Nakauchi) in order to find out L’s true identity, but even that feels half-assed: L is from an orphanage where they were raising super smart kids to be detectives…or something like that.
L’s character is often overlooked for less exciting moments in the film (Mia and Light have lots of sex, we get it), and this left me with a lot of unanswered questions. Stanfield’s portrayal of L is one of the highlights of the film in fact, his dynamic with Wolff kept me intrigued right until the end. He’s an incredibly intelligent and unemotional human being who seems completely unapproachable, especially when eating mass amounts of candy. Known only by this initial, L (Lakeith Stanfield) is both the most interesting and underdeveloped character in the movie. ‘Kira’ does catch one person’s eye in particular: L. Kira’s presence in the world feels underwhelming, when in fact it draws attention from law enforcement organizations across the globe. In the span of a 2-minute montage, Light goes from murdering one or two local criminals to international terrorists and dictators. The biggest problem is we don’t see any progression from Light to Kira. He creates an alter-ego, Kira, to throw people off the trail (Kira is derived from the Japanese word meaning ‘killer’) and incites debate on whether these mass murderers and terrorists who are killed had it coming. Light’s charisma and sarcasm keep people on his side just long enough to remember that he is in fact murdering people by the hundreds. Wingard’s use of B-movie-style blood and guts feels right at home in this adaptation, and Light’s teenager reaction of laughter and excitement to these gruesome deaths mirrored my own. Like Loki in the Marvel world, Ryuk wants to trick Light into thinking he has power, but he also gets joy out of making people’s heads explode on television. It’s clear that he enjoyed playing Ryuk (it’s certainly not the weirdest character he’s played), and Wingard’s depiction of the death god is both terrifying and slightly playful. Wingard creates some truly terrifying moments, most of which center around Ryuk, whom Dafoe depicts brilliantly. Director Adam Wingard ( V/H/S, Blair Witch) does a commendable job with the source material, given the fact he has 100 minutes to direct a film based on 37 television episodes. The movie feels undeniably American, and, unlike its Japanese original, often mixes humor with horror. Light and his girlfriend Mia (Margaret Qualley) then spend most of the movie murdering anyone who they feel is a plague on society. The Death Note, as the book is called, belongs to Ryuk (voiced by Willem Dafoe), a death god who wants to create chaos and disorder on Earth and thinks that Light has the potential to fulfill these ideals. Light’s world changes when a notebook falls from the sky and offers him the chance to kill anyone by simply writing their name in the book. The movie centers around Light Turner (Nat Wolff), a high school student with a wayward moral compass who can’t seem to figure out if he wants to play the nerd or “dark outcast” archetype.
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