Death Note - Film Review

Death Note is directed by Adam Wingard and stars Nat Wolff, Lakeith Stanfield, Margaret Qualley, Paul Nakauchi, Willem Dafoe and is based off of the manga Death Note by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata.

Plot
A high school student named Light Yaga- I mean, Turner (Nat Wolff) discovers a mysterious notebook that has the power to kill anyone whose name is written within its pages, and joins his girlfriend Misa Aman- I mean Mia (Margaret Qualley) to kill criminals with it. And L (Lakeith Sanfield) is investigating it.

Review
Before getting into the review, let me say a few words about the source material:

I don't know too much about Death Note. I've seen about two episodes of the anime, and I read the first four volumes of the manga in the Black Edition, which collects two volumes in one book.

While what I have seen and read of Death Note was good, this thing is not.

I'm not going to compare this thing to American anime adaptations like Dragonball: Evolution, Speed Racer or 2017's Ghost in the Shell because I haven't seen any of those. And I know there were a few Japanese live action Death Note movies, but I haven't seen those either.

I wish I could get my one hour and forty minutes left.

I wish they showed Light actually discovering the Death Note, as he already has it in his backpack. I know that's pretty much a nitpick.

In the montage of Light and Misa using the note makes this thing feel like a high-school romance film with gore and Death Note just mixed in with it.

That reminds me of something: This film is actually quite gory, as there's a scene where one guy is decapitated by a ladder, a scene with a bunch of dead people in a nightclub, people leaping off of buildings, a guy gets hit by a SWAT truck, and many others.

The movie is just boring too. I kept checking on my TV to see how much more I had left to watch.

I don't like the characters here, they're either unlikable, like Light, or don't have much to them, like the FBI officers. The only characters I really cared for were L and Ryuk (Willem Dafoe).

Let's talk about the characters, I'm not even bringing up the whitewashing controversy here.
Nat Wolff is not good as Light Turner. If I was to make a live action Death Note film, I would not cast some kid from the show The Naked Brothers Band. Seriously, what is that name? He's unlikeable and pretty much a rebel who wants to find a way around the rules because rules are dumb,which Light Yagami was not. Nat Wolff also looks nothing like Light Yagami either.

I can barely tell you anything about Margaret Qualley as Mia, as she's pretty much the same as Light but worse and tries to kill him.

I did like Lakeith Stanfield as L. One thing different about him in this version from the source material is that he doesn't die in this version. I'm not up to that part in either the anime or manga, but I've had that spoiled for me before so it won't be a shock when I get to that part. He's one of the two characters in the movie that I liked. He's pretty much like the L from the anime and manga, but this time he goes berserk after learning that Watari (Paul Nakauchi) had died. He goes insane and runs after Light in a rather uninteresting chase scene.

The other character I liked, Willem Dafoe as Ryuk, he's pretty much just like the Ryuk from the anime and manga.

It's late and I don't want to talk about this movie anymore, so I'll wrap this up right now. This movie sucks. Read and watch the manga and anime instead, maybe check out the Japanese films, those might be good, I'll probably check those out soon. I guess American versions of anime just don't work.

That reminds me, it came out a few months ago that J. J. Abrams plans on remaking the anime film Your Name. Please don't. J. J. Abrams, in the extremely unlikely event you're reading this, don't remake Your Name.

When I do my ranking of the movies I saw this year, you'll see where I put Your Name.

See you tomorrow with a review of Bright.

4.5/10

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Next review - Bright