Deadly Failure - Review of "Death Note"
If you go on holiday to Barcelona for all inclusive holidays and you don't leave the hotel for a week then you can't say that you have visited Spain. Similarly, you cannot consider yourself to be an anime expert when you only embrace Dragon Balla, Naruto, Attack on Titan, Akira and maybe some other classic titles. It is a great and fascinating branch of art in which one can get lost for years - and new things are created all the time.
I have to recognize myself as just such an "Sunday" anime fan - I'm gradually hovering over the most famous and key titles, I'm going to add more titles to the list, but it's still only the tip of the iceberg. On the other hand, when it comes to "Death Note", this is a position I have been trying to try for many years - anime made a huge impression on me, I recommended it (rather ineffectively) to people who do not watch similar things, mainly because of a very interesting idea, a great game between a detective and a killer, and constantly built tension.
To those who have not had a lot of time before, I will briefly draw a plot: one day a calm, intelligent teenager Light finds a mysterious notebook with the inscription "Death Note" on the cover. Ryuk's figure, the demon of death, is connected with him. Any person whose name is entered in a notebook will die in the form chosen by the trustee. Light at the beginning of the insecurely tests a notebook when it turns out that it actually works, with time our hero becomes more and more daring and starts to dispense justice on his own as a mysterious god of the pseudonym Kira. To fight with him, he becomes a legendary insomnia-sleepless L - a masked detective with a very specific character. The psychological game between the two characters is fascinating, because Kira is able to kill only knowing the face and the name of his opponent opens up a lot of interesting possibilities, and the whole is seen with bated breath, episode by episode. In all this we cannot forget about the figure of the demon Ryuk, who on the one hand is sinister and mysterious, on the other hand can be liked and is not an unequivocally bad figure.
The details of the plot will blur my memory, because it's been a couple of years since I got to know the original "Death Note". I know for sure that I liked the first half of anime, the last dozen or so episodes a little less, but after all I was full of mega and I decided that I would certainly see once again. After the netflix screening, I only hope that the amneis will come much faster than last time.
Because of this forgottenness, I was free from the strict expectations of the feature film "Death Note", not remembering exactly what and when happened. I was simply hoping for a well made film that would benefit from a good base and provide a nice, slightly stronger entertainment. The creators got a great idea for the start, mega an interesting character of Ryuka, which combined with a well-known brand seemed to guarantee success. A talented director and scriptwriter who would feel the atmosphere of the series could create a classicist here. In fact, it was enough to do a good, craftsmanship work to make something just decent and digestible. Unfortunately.....
The main character's acting must be described as "I want, but I cannot. Each mine, grimace, reaction is forced, artificial and mimicking. His facial expression, when he escapes from Ryukie for the first time, would be perfectly suited to the chase procession of Benny Hilla. When he tries to be threatening, he looks like a student who has put up a teacher who is giving the cushion and waiting for an hour of zero. We do not feel his power, his increasing audacity and we do not believe in the change of his personality. His psychotic antagonist L is even less credible, and his style of being more irritating than intriguing. The biggest profession, however, is Willem Dafoe, or the hope of this film - I was mega happy with this casting decision. The profession is not because it doesn't work, but because Ryuka's figure is hopelessly written, flattened and one-dimensional. In anime, we were dealing with a terrifyingly looking, but nice demon and this created an additional mindfuck, because it was difficult to clearly define our attitude towards shinigami (demon of death). Here we have a malicious, bad figure who shows a lot more initiative than in anime. Ryuk in the current netflix version would not have been able to break through to pop culture on such a scale as that of the original, and although Dafoe rescues him as he can, it remains a little to save.
Unfortunately, acting is only just beginning. The attempt to make a 1.5h movie from almost 40 episodes of anime ended with a dramatic simplification of the psychological game between the main characters. The discovery of Kira's identity takes place without any problems, the whole situation is presented in such a way that we do not feel any difficulty or challenge in this, Light does not have to resort to any tricks and fortels to use the notebook and kill further. I don't even mention the disco exchange of cylinders, because I am ashamed. The greatest shame, however, is.... it's hard for me even to write, but "twist" a fictional circle