Illness has taken me under again. This time it is some sort of flu or flu variant, possibly a stomach bug but I also have an ongoing headache and my throat is slowly getting rawer over the past 36 hours. As I posted on Facebook, nightmares have come with the illness, and they have been pretty severe on their own, let alone having to also feel completely shitty while dealing with monsters and murderers. As a result, this post is going to consist of this lead-in and a single review of the new American version of Death Note. I had planned capsule reviews of several other films that I viewed in the previous week: Cher and C. Aguilera in Burlesque (2010), Greer and Garson in Adventure (1945), J-Law and galaxy guardian Chris Pratt in the gorgeous but vapid Passengers (from this year), Ida Lupino and Joan Leslie as an odd sister pair in The Hard Way (1943), and Elvis himself in Easy Come, Easy Go (1967).
It's a shame, because I had a few things to say (as I usually do) about all of these films, but the way I am feeling, it would be eons before I got the thing written. This is primarily due to my having some other topics I hope to write about this weekend, and I don't want to shift ever more projects to the back burner. (It is already a horrid habit of mine that I need to overcome.) And my reason for choosing Death Note as the single review this time is because I had already written three-quarters of it. It too was intended as a small, capsule review but turned a bit larger as I got going on it, so now my inability to edit myself down for once has turned into providence.
One note that I should add for the films that appear in the header image for This Week in Rixflix this go-around: most of the films that I watched over the past two weeks were an attempt to catch up on films from TCM's Summer Under the Stars, an event they hold annually each August. The 24 hours within a single day are used to focus on a particular star, and I love to use the event to catch up on films that I have missed in the filmographies of certain actors. This year, Summer Under the Stars overlapped with my attempt to finish the Hitchcock film course, and so I pretty much ignored the first week of SUTS, and really only came into it near the end of the second week. But I was able to knock out several titles each from Barbara Stanwyck (three films), Glenn Ford (two films), Greer Garson (six films), Ricardo Montalban (another six), and Dennis Morgan (never big with me, but I took advantage of it and saw a whopping eight films, most of them co-starring screen partner Jack Carson). When I drink, I drink deeply.
The Numbers:
This week's feature-length film count: 28; 23 first-time viewings and 5 repeats.
Highest rated feature-length films: The Getaway (1972) – 8/9
Lowest rated feature films: Easy Come, Easy Go (1967) and Texas Terror (1934) – 4/9
Average films per day in August: 2.77
Average films per day in 2017 so far: 3.00
Consecutive days with at least 1 feature-length film seen per day: 261
The Reviews:
Death Note (2017) Dir.: Adam Wingard – Did we need another one? Look, a few years ago, against my better judgment, I decided to delve into the whole Death Note thing after all the initial hype burned itself out in the manner of most pop culture. Not the manga though; I had pretty much taken myself out of the comic buying game by the time Death Note started being available in the U.S., and so I went straight to the anime. I went into Death Note with some serious qualms about being sucked up in yet another "phenomena," but then it turned out that I quite enjoyed watching the series. It took me a little while to warm to the concept, but eventually I got caught up in the cat-and-mouse between the holder of the death note, Light, and his pursuer, L. Still, even with liking the series (but not loving it), I had serious doubts about the live-action version I had also heard about it. I been through a few other anime series that had been transfered to live action, and in most cases, the results were rather tepid overall. Did I want to waste my time?And so I watched the live-action films, Death Note and Death Note 2: The Last Name. While my main interest was to see just how faithfully they would reproduce the story away from animation, once more, I was pleasantly surprised with how much I enjoyed them. In fact, I liked the films better than the series, and even rewatched both of them pretty quickly after I finished them. So, was I a Death Note convert? Not exactly, but I could not claim to not have found enjoyment in the property. Even with that, I had even more reservations when I discovered there was a third Japanese live-action film that had been produced, which was titled L: Change the World. The film had nothing to do with the Death Note series apart from the main character of the Holmes-like detective, L, who delves into one final case at the end of his young life. Since L is the most intriguing persona in the series, I naturally had to watch that film and once again enjoyed another piece of the Death Note property, though it was not nearly the same level of quality as the first two.
So, I had success after success after success (however qualified) in watching the various pieces of Death Note; surely this could carry over into the new American version? Especially when the director is Adam Wingard, a young talent for whom I have developed a high regard over the past few years, chiefly due to You're Next and The Guest. I wrote last week about my disappointment in another Wingard project, his sequel-cum-remake (for hire) of The Blair Witch Project. I felt that his direction was fine, but he was simply overwhelmed by the necessity of both slavishly replicating the mood of the original while also creating yet another chapter in a property that really had seen its day about fifteen years ago.
Here, in Wingard's version, that disappointment is mirrored, as over-familiarity is a definite factor, but the real problem is that Death Note, unlike TBWP, is still a live property in its native land of Japan. [*See note below this review.] Wingard's direction can be as taut as ever (which it is) but the film just kept nagging me with questions over its necessity. Much of the bad press surrounding this new version has been about possible "whitewashing," in replacing formerly Japanese characters with mostly Caucasians. I don't really have a problem with that since the locale is now in the U.S. (Seattle), and so a greater diversity of races becomes more possible, but the character of Light could (and really should have, in my opinion) have easily remained Japanese. (L., always the most fascinating figure in any version of Death Note, is African-American in the Wingard version.)
My real problem with the film, apart from its ridiculous finale (which differs greatly from other versions), is the question of why couldn't the Japanese versions just stand as the versions seen in the U.S.? The originals are both well-shot, high quality productions with some excellent acting and solid action sequences. I ask this not long after having already derided the American remake of the Argentinian Oscar-winning film, The Secret in Their Eyes. The American version was not bad overall as a film on its own; it was just completely unnecessary, as were many changes to the story to try and make the film more topical in the current American climate of terroristic fear. I felt even stronger almost 25 years ago when an American studio decided to do a remake of George Sluizer's incredible The Vanishing (Spoorloos). At least they hired the same director to screw up his own remake (coincidentally also shot in Seattle) just five years after the original. I know people who loved the American version at the time, but to a person, not one of them had seen the Dutch version, which differs greatly in style and tone from the one with Jeff Bridges and Sandra Bullock.
Of course, I don't hate all American remakes of foreign films. We wouldn't have Some Like It Hot, 12 Monkeys, The Magnificent Seven, and The Departed without some things being remade. (These are just a few brief examples; there are many others.) Closer to the subject at hand, speaking of U.S. remakes of J-horror properties, I loved Gore Verbinski's American update of Ringu back in 2002, a case where an already terrific Japanese horror film was arguably equaled (if not bettered) in effectiveness. So, this is most definitely not a call for American studios to stop remaking foreign films. People love to point out trends, but I feel each film project is unique unto itself. Some movies work and some movies just don't, and for me, as long as the creators of the new version have an interesting or original approach to even an old, crusty idea, wonders can often come out of that. That is part of the beauty of filmmaking, and art in general. So, I say let the sequels and remakes continue to come; I will find the ones worthy of my time eventually. And a small portion of them might turn out to be spectacular.
But the new version of Death Note? Not so much. It looks like product and it feels like product. I love Wingard, and still have hopes for his Godzilla vs. Kong film in 2020 (and contrary to popular opinion, it is no mere remake), but this film just has the sense of a job for hire. He's treading water here waiting for the big money down the line. I will give the writers some credit for attempting something different from the originals with the flashy ending, but as I mentioned before, it comes off all wrong, and every step taken along the way to get the story to that ending cheapens the overall film. It is really the second half of the film where the new Death Note truly goes awry. I don't hold this against Wingard as he had no credited hand in the screenplay, but he is still the boss in the end. The film's failure as a novel production unto its own is his failure as well. Why couldn't the series just stay in Japan? – TC4P Rating: 5/9
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