Review of Death Note (2017) by Colin M — 26 Aug 2017

I am a huge fan of the Anime and Manga and this feels like almost an insult to the source material not to the extent of DBZ Evolution, but still bad and hard to watch. Awkward acting, out of place forced feeling cursing for no reason, and some pretty glaring plot holes. Their is a lot I feel they could've done better truly. Their characterization of Light and L feels like a betrayal of how intelligent and level headed they are, yet the movie makes Light look like a dolt with almost no intelligence and a lack of ability to keep his cool as he did in the anime. L's portrayal was surprisingly good for his first few appearances were shockingly on character and felt very like L (Note he behaves like L but he does some things L would never do. I'd go into detail but I want to avoid spoilers) should; very withdrawan, silent, and socially awkward. However in his later appearances later in the film was of the rails and far from how level headed L would ever behave. Plus there is the added rules to the death note and the conversion of Ryuke into almost a villain, while in the source material he's more of a neutral 3rd party. I do have more problems and gripes about this film, but I will say maybe if I haven't watched the superior source material first it might be halfway enjoyable. I'll say the best thing this movie might do is push more people to watch the anime and I feel like that is a good enough cause for this movie to exist. But I feel like a review isn't complete without saying what they could have done better otherwise it's just film bashing. Obviously the one glaring thing they could've done was follow the source material, and I'll take that a step further and say just follow the L ark (In my opinion the bestimate part of death note, they could've end the Manga and anime it was a perfect ending). The L ark would have been perfect infact it's almost the L Ark in the movie just a very weak version of it. But if they wanted to keep the same story I say make Light seem more intelligent and level headed add scenes where we can see inside Light's and L's head so we can see a battle of wits and add some tension. (semi spoilers ahead) Just imagine the chase scene in the film if it cut back and forth between their thoughts of how to outsmart each other it would've been a huge game of cat a mouse, a giant moving chess game. Just seeing the battle of wit would have added a lot otherwise this movie feels like it fails to make u think about what's right and wrong like the anime. You can turn your brain off and watch the action and for source material like death note I find it very sad. In conclusion this is a very disappointing representation of Death Note, it exists and I guess it's a good enough thing as long as it pushes someone out there to give the source material a shot.

I hope you guys like this it's the first review I've written but I had to say something about this movie.