Review of Death Note (2017) by Will J — 25 Aug 2017

Death Note is directed by Adam Wingard, and it stars Nat Wolff, Margaret Qualley, Keith Stanfield, and Willem Dafoe in an anime adaptation about a high school student that gets bullied and wanted to see justice get done even if it doesn't happen, and when a notebook comes right at him and he uses it, he realizes the powers that it contains, and wants to use it for good deeds, even bough he has to go up against a police detective that doesn't agree with his ways.

I'm gonna go out and say that I don't have that much knowledge of the anime show as I only watched the first episode, and consider that this movie wasn't even close to being similar to it, I kind of just didn't care about the comparisons as I didn't really watch that show.

What got me into watching however, was that my friend wanted me to see it with him, and he's a fan of the show. So I was curious to see what his opinion of the movie was, and when we finished it, he said that the whole movie itself is not even close to being similar to the show, but he still enjoy it the same way that I did.

He realize that America was going to make their own version of Death Note, which I was saying that as long as it has the spirit of what made the show popular, it wouldn't matter, and we both think the movie did.

The acting in this is really good, whether it be Nat Wolff, Keith Sandford, which my friend say that he was actually pretty faithful to the film, and Willem Dafoe who is excellent in this and is the best part of the film.

The visual effects look pretty good, and they did get the design of Ryuk right. The score by Atticus Ross and Leopold Ross is catchy, which almost sounded anime at times, and I was interested in what's going on, while getting to know a bit about the characters, even if it's a bit simplified.

I didn't really know where it's going, and I wasn't even quite sure how the characters were going to get out of it. The issues that I have with it, are that the plot is all over the place, which it can't focus on a single plot line without going to another, and the Watari character had a really dumb moment when dealing with Light, which I can't say without going into spoilers.

I did want to see a bit more of Ryuk as he's always enjoyable to watch, but those are small issues as Death Note, in my opinion, is a great movie that makes me want to actually watch the anime show, even if it's very different.