Review of Death Note (2017) by Hopefulcynic — 18 Oct 2018

Wow. Just. Wow. I heard this movie was bad and thought what the hell, I'll go into it like I did with Cloverfield Paradox (a really dumb movie) and just have a fun time. That worked with CP, but holy hell was Death Note a bad movie. Now I don't expect everything to be like the anime. There are some things from the show that would only work in an anime (such as Misa's personality and the potato chip scene), but changing Light and L the way they did was a bad choice. I'm sure a lot of people are going to get mad that they made L black. I get that, but didn't really care as L's ethnicity was never an important part of the show and the show takes place in America. The changes that did piss me off were how stupid, emotional, and irrational they made those two main characters. In the show, L and Light are brilliant and watching their cat and mouse games play out is what makes this show so much fun to watch. L is also subtitle. In the show, L eventually introduces himself to Light and even invites him into the investigation. He's smart and knows that he can get to know him better even though he only thinks it's a 5% chance that Light is Kira. There's a scene in the show where L "interrogates" Light by playing a game of tennis without saying hardly a word. That's the subtlety that made the show great. In the movie, L confronts Light pretty early on and tells him that he knows he's Kira. Light doesn't even deny this. They get into a shouting match and L starts knocking things off of the table.

I'm going to stop myself here because I want to give my 2 cents on the movie as it stands on it's own. Without ever seeing the anime, you're still going to hate this movie. It looks like it was directed by drunk teenagers that happened to have a decent budget (though they clearly did not spend that money on good actors). It felt like there were scenes that were supposed to be in the movie, but the editors forgot to add them. For example there's this scene where Ryuk tells Light that he told him to give up the note, "but [Light] didn't listen". The problem with that scene is that that discussion never happened. There is a scene in the beginning where Ryuk tells Light how to get rid of the book, but in that scene he's pretty much encouraging him to use it. This happens a lot, but I don't want to spoil the movie. This movie is filled with plot holes and inconsistencies. It's frustrating to watch. Don't watch this movie even out of curiosity. It's hands down one of the worse movies I've ever seen in my life. The only redeeming quality this movie has is that William Defoe as Ryuk was **** brilliant. He nails that character so well. In fact, they handled his character pretty well. They changed a lot about him from the anime, but some of it was better for the movie. The problem is that they don't explore the character at all. The closest they get is a warning in the note that "He's not your pet. He's not your friend. Don't trust Ryuk". Nothing ever comes from that. The show actually doesn't obsess over the killings from the death note. Sure Light uses it, but most of the deaths are mostly heart attacks (that's how the person dies if you don't specify) and the whole show is about exploring morality, right and wrong, and who gets to makes those judgments. I thought this show was going to ditch that and just be a gory horror film. That would have been better than trying to do both. The thing that made the show so good is that it kept surprising you because the writers were intelligent and came up with things that blew you away. This show just didn't have the talent to pull that off so it's in between the two and it just doesn't work.

Save yourself and avoid this movie like the plague.