Movie Review: Death Note

Hey Movie Fans

So Netflix is never shy when it comes to producing content that is a little off centre and not that mainstream.

They've started to dip their toe into the anime scene which for the life of me I don't know why anyone would. In the history of anime, there has yet to be a single live-action movie that was worthwhile, in fact, they usually tank pretty hard, the only one I can remember coming remotely close to passable was Ghost in a shell.

Poster for Death Note (Image source: IMDB)

So seeing them take a shot at Death Note didn't fill me with confidence. Since its a very complex and well fleshed out story, a movie would need to be done well to capture its essence.

I've been mulling over watching this one for some time since its always in my recommendations feed. I didn't hear anything positive from friends who saw it, so I wasn't all that keen.

Eventually, I decided what the hell it's only 1 hour and 20 mins long right? If it had, I haven't wasted that much time

Trailer for Death Note

What is Death Note about?

Death Note is the story of an American high school student named Light Turner, who finds a mysterious supernatural notebook known as the "Death Note".

After being visited by the Death Note's previous owner: a demonic Japanese god of death named Ryuk, who tells him that the book causes the death of anyone whose name is written within its pages

Light eventually takes on a role of a superhero in his mind and decides to kill people whom he deems to be morally unworthy of life, under the alias of a serial killer named "Kira", in a bid to change the world into a perfect society without crime,

The "Kira" persona divides the world while an enigmatic international detective known only as L, attempt to find and apprehend the person known as "Kira" and put a stop to these mass killings.

What I thought of Death Note

The story

As you can tell from the plot above the story was a range of elements that should be fleshed out such as how did Light find the book. How the book chooses someone, where does the book come from and all the important rules the book has.

Secondly, It should touch on crime and how the crime affected Lights upbringing, how it took away his mother and fragmented the relationship with his police officer father.

It should look flesh out how L become such a commanding figure in international law enforcement and his motivations behind stopping Kira.

It should have shown us more regarding the factions that are pro and against Kira and touch on is murder the only real justice.

It explores none of that through the entire runtime of the movie. Its as if the viewer needs to assume and imagine what the world is like while following an awkward cry baby teenager as he struggles to handle his first relationship and the shit storm his caused by murdering 100s of people using the Death Note.

Even if we exclude the original content the movie is based on the plot is thin with hardly any characters being fleshed out, flimsy story arcs and nothing that pushes the narrative forward.

It just is about a boy who can kill people with a book and cops want to find out who is behind it, the end!

The visuals

The visuals are pretty cool from the depiction of the demon Ryuk to some of the rather creative and gruesome death sequences in the movie.

There is some questionable CGI later on in the film, but it doesn't harm the overall visual experience of the movie.

The Cast

You know when you leave crackers out for a while, and they get stale, and you still try to eat them, that's basically what every actor in this movie was going for.

Its like they were all chewing on mummy dicks, the acting was so empty and you don't feel for any of the characters, in fact, they could have all died and you wouldn't have cared a single bit.

The only person worth mentioning is William Defoe whose voice acting is at its sinister best

My rating

Even if you're not a fan of the original content and you're looking for a cool offbeat action film, I would suggest you give it a miss.

Watching it without reading the Manga or seeing the anime might save you the pain of seeing what was missing on screen but it won't save you from a pretty empty confusing mess of a movie.

I would have to give this movie a 4 out of 10 and I would write the Netflix Death Note movie in my death note so we could kill it off completely

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