Review of Death Note (2017) by Tomas B — 24 Aug 2017

You'll forgive me if I turn into a bit of a geek during this review.

I had been really excited for this one, since Death Note has always been one of my favorite Animes. The problem is that, historically, live-action adaptations... well they tend to suck (even the not-sucky ones are either way to bizarre, or just meh)... but let's move on to the rest of my thoughts.

Personality-Wise, Willem Dafoe & Lakeith Stanfield came the closest to their anime counterparts as Ryuk the Shinigami (god of death) and the great detective knowm simply as "L" respectively, with Stanfield starting out as a strong L, though devolving into something, that, while still a strong Character, was too emotional for a character like L, while I felt Dafoe, pretty much nailed Ryuk's manic glee in watching a human use the Death Note.

Shea Wingham was okay, as Detective James Turner, having a weird arc throughout the movie of going from slightly unlikable to being too much of a sad sap in my eyes (His anime counterpart, Soichiro Yagami, was also very protective of Light, but he never let his personal feelings get in the way of the investigation)... but the two worst characters had to be the main leads: Light Turner, played by Natt Wolf and Mia Sutton played by Margaret Qualley. Both characters seemed like they had PARTS that connected them to their anime counterparts (Light Yagami & Misa Amane, respectively)... but the similarities stopped at VERY bare bones basics, with Mia being a sort of Lady Macbeth character whose pride and ambition led to her downfall (very unlike Misa, who was a bit dim, but so obsessed with Light, she'd even kill for him), while Light... well, there's no two ways around it... he was a moron at some points and too much of a sad sap at others. His anime counterpart was an idealistic, cold and calculating sociopath who wanted to simply become the God of a new world free of crime... but this Light seemed more like a scared little kid than anything else. Hell, he's even a bit too liberal with his "Secret Identity" and does a terrible job at hiding It, going so far as to order around a future victim over the phone in broad daylight WHILE BEING TAILED BY POLICE!

My biggest problem with the movie was that it only seemed to have a basic understanding of the original anime... without understanding the characters themselves.

Yes, L did call out Kira through a press conference, but he never showed his face to anyone outside the Kira Task Force.

Yes, Ryuk did explain SOME rules for the notebook, but he never wrote down every single rule. Hell, LIGHT was the one who figured how to use the Death Note to its full potential in the Original (playing off the idea that he's supposed to be a child prodigy).

While I did enjoy it slightly more than OTHER American adaptations of anime (Hi Dragonball Evolution. Hi, Astro Boy!) It still felt like there wasn't enough understanding of the Anime for the movie to do justice to the source material... and I think that hurt it in the long run.