Death Note (2017)

I did not watch this movie with any pre-conceived notions of what Death Note has to be. I saw a clip with Willem Defoe as Ryuk and was sold. Having just rewatched the movie, I enjoyed it even more. The performances are great, it's filled to the brim with interesting and cool shots (with lots of Dutch angles and great background details,) the OST is full of 80s synthy goodness, and the whole movie is so much fun. Lakeith Stanfield gives the best performance of the movie, which made me pay attention to him before he showed up in Get Out and Atlanta, but Nat Wolff, much reviled I've seen for his portrayal of Light, is equally if not more deserving of praise for his hilarious line deliveries and for throwing himself full-force into this role. This role which isn't the same Light as in the manga or anime, but is the right character for this movie. This is a funny movie, and doesn't take itself to seriously, but is also very professionally and carefully put together on a technical level. Particularly at the beginning it struck me as being quite similar to Donnie Darko, but becomes its own twisted self as it goes on. I have heard the complaints, the angry fans, but as a movie, not as a Death Note adaptation but purely as its own film, I can find very little wrong with it, and countless reasons to enjoy it.

Let me start off by saying I love the original Death Note anime. However this live action rendition is absolutely horrible. I appreciate what they were trying to do but really NetFlix.. The main character is a bad actor with no talent whatsoever. I had to force myself to finish it. It just drags on and on with a confusing plot and bad acting in general. Do yourself a favor and skip this monstrosity of a film.

The movie was great for a Netflix movie especially if you never watched the anime ( like me) its definitely worth the watch

I am a sucker for movies with gimmicks like this. But this failed for a few reasons. The protagonist was OK, but the femme fatale girlfriend was only so-so. There was no discernable bond between the cop dad and son either. The young detective was extremely annoying. I hear that this is based on Japanese anime, so I'll watch that. Then there was the exposition, the kid states he's seen an 8 foot demon. Yes we know, you showed it us! Never spell out what you've shown us, this is seriously infuriating. If someone is too dumb to follow a simple plot then so what? The demon seemed to be there as a kind of voice over deus ex machina. He was unnecessary, and made the movie goofy. The light twists in this movie were the best thing about it, but they were in a vacuum. I don't hate this movie in the way I hate, say, the new Starwars nonsense, it was mostly entertaining. But mistakes were made that stopped it being fun.