Taking an existing medium and trying to adapt it to another is never an easy task. When the original is Manga/Anime, and you would like to make a movie that will be widely seen by an American audience that task becomes exponentially harder. Death Note attempts to do just this, and in some ways, it is terrible but also wonderful for almost the same reasons.
Light Turner is a very intelligent high school student, but he has no friends and is misunderstood. One day, while sitting outside and doing the homework of other students for payment, a book literally falls out of the sky and almost into his lap. A random rain storm blows in at the same moment and Light rushes inside to escape it. As he is running toward the school he sees another student being harassed by the school bully. Light tries to intervein and in the process is knocked out. When he comes to, he is confronted by the principal about his forged homework. The principal looks past the fact that he was knocked out, and only sees that Light has been helping other students cheat. Nothing becomes of his assault by the bully. This sets the tone of the entire movie. Light is seen not as a victim, but as one that is in the wrong. Granted, he was cheating, but to him, the larger problem is that he has been harassed by a bully along with many other kids.
As Light is sent to detention to think over what he has done, he remembers the book that fell from the sky and decides to look through it. While doing this, he encounters a strange demonic presence. Light, thinking that he is dreaming, talks to the demon and they both agree that the school bully should pay for what he has done to Light and all the other kids. The demon explains that all he has to do is write the name in the book, and it will be taken care of. Light, again believing he is still in a dream does this, and waits. Seconds later, the school bully is decapitated by a Rube Goldberg series of events. Light then realizes that he is NOT dreaming and that this new-found power can change the world.
Death Note is a strange movie. It asks the viewer to stay grounded in a reality where normal things happen to normal people, but throws this insane character into the mix and doesn’t bat an eye at it. Think of Death Note and the demon in it Ryuk, as a sort of different version of “Final Destination”. Ryuk is basically death and he has names in a book that he must kill any way he can. The circumstances which all of the victims of the Death Note die are written in the book, but the manner in which all those play out is sometimes wildly complicated. It’s … interesting. What I liked most, and would much rather have a movie about, was the “detective” that is hunting down the cause of hundreds of deaths around the world. Simply referred to as “L” his backstory is given as a throwaway line, but that story would be (at least for me) vastly more interesting to see.
Full disclosure, I have absolutely ZERO reverence for the Manga/Anime that this movie is based on. In fact, I knew nothing of it at all until it was the source of massive ridicule and hate in social media this past summer. Having said that, aside from some pretty massive leaps of faith taken in the plot, it’s not as terrible as some would like you to believe. I will say that Death Note is the perfect movie for a generation of Emo, death-obsessed, and frankly depressing kids out there. I would imagine that is why this movie was adapted in the first place. Sure, that’s painting with a broad brush, but it was the first thing that popped to mind when the “love interest” of the story comes in. I probably will never watch Death Note again, but it wasn’t a movie that infuriated me like it did others. The soundtrack is shit, really. So there’s that to be mad at I guess.
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