This was always going to get attacked by fans of the manga and anime. It should come as no surprise that Hollywood would take a beloved story (although beloved by a relatively small segments of society) and then change it up. It was always going to induce groans from long-time fans the same way that anytime a Korean thriller is remade in the USA they manage to screw that up for fans also. It is unavoidable . Anyway, despite that, the movie is entertaining for people that are not super dedicated to the real story.
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Let's just get this straight: I am not a Death Note expert. I have only seen this 2017 film and one other one, both of which I enjoyed. I do not like it when Hollywood changes movies to appeal to their audience, but from a financial point of view I completely understand why they do it. Unfortunately for a lot of these things the bottom line is all about money.
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For those of you unfamiliar with the story, a high-school "loner" has a book drop out of the sky near him and contained inside are a group of rules dictating how the book can be used. Any name that is written in the book will result in that person's death. There are a bunch of other rules and some of them are explained as the film proceeds.
Given the setting in a high-school. It should come as no surprise that a teenage romance gets kind of forced into the story. I mean, that kind of has to happen in these USA films right?
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This is one thing that angered fanbois because this forced romance isn't necessary to the story and well, for me anyway, it just made the film seem "typical." The movie was too gory to be aimed at the lucrative pre-teen audience but the teenage romance needs to be in here? Why?
Now I am not going to jump on the bandwagon and say that "this movie was crap because it didn't follow the manga / anime/ japanese story! etc. For one thing I am not familiar enough with any of that to have an opinion. This movie is getting ripped to shreds in popular online rating sites and it isn't very difficult to understand why. If you step on the toes of something really popular with people who also tend to be more online oriented (like Anime) you invite their wrath in the online arena. Netflix was never going to be able to make this in a way that would satisfy long-time fans of Death Note but for me, who bases his opinions almost entirely upon raw entertainment value I say this film is MUCH better than what the Tomatoes and IMDB scores indicate (which are between 20 and 40 percent.)
For a "novice" like me, i found the story compelling, most of the characters interesting and the acting to be quite well done. This movie is being called a "failure" by fans but these people are basing this on the RT scores as a metric of success, which it is not. Netflix has already announced a part 2 of the series and that isn't normally something that gets done with "failures."
I agree and disagree with the fanbois on this one and it is reflected in my overall score. The movie isn't perfect, but I really enjoyed it. I think that if someone is being honest and not being so dedicated to the specifics of the original story (and let's be honest, not many people are familiar with it in the grand scheme of things) they can say that this film is pretty good.