Review of Death Note (2017) by C.m. W — 28 Aug 2017

POTENTIAL SPOILERS!

This could have been done much better than it was. I was really looking forward to a westernised version of one of the best animes ever.

The only good part was Ryuk, very well voice acted and fairly close to the Ryuk of the Anime. However Light and L were both so badly written it's shocking.

In the anime Light starts off with a superiority complex, he's the best at everything he does, is good looking, popular, highly intelligent and sporty. It's his innate sense of justice that causes him to do the things he does. The only part of that which comes across in the movie is his intelligence, he otherwise acts very much like a moody loaner. It's almost as if the writer's thoughts on his motivation is that he has to be damaged in some way, with revenge (not justice) being his primary motivation. The moodiness can be forgiven if we take the movie on its own and put it down to his mother being killed. He also shouldn't be falling in love, over time Light in the anime becomes more and more sociopathic and uses the people around him towards his own ends, not caring about how his manipulations affect them. The movie comes across as a teen romance with none of the excellent psychological manipulation that Light is know for.

L is also poorly written in comparison to the anime. L is always cool, calm and collected in the anime. He's very badly damaged which is was causes his eccentricities and comes across as more of a sociopath than Light. In the movie he's far too emotional and tried to take matters into his own hands when he basically goes mad with the desire for revenge.

There's a fair amount more wrong with this movie, but I could forgive everything that I've already mentioned IF they had actually managed to work in the psychological manipulation that both Light and L engage in. It wouldn't even have to follow the same exact story. It would just have to actually be good. The lame attempts at manipulation using the rules (of which there are far too many and are easily circumvented) of the notebook are all forgettable with the possible exception of the final scene on the ferris wheel. The final scene with Lights entry into the Death Note also ends up working to very neatly wrap everything up in a little bow and feels like it was just too easy.

I hope Netflix try again, and this time preferably make it a series, and not a simple teenage romance with a little bit of horror. It should be full of twists and be totally unpredictable because of the cleverness of the characters.

This is the first Netflix made entertainment I haven't liked, and sfor an anime series I loved. I'm absolutely gutted that I have to give it such a low score.