Taking to the big screen stories that have already triumphed in other media and other ways is risky because it doesn't always go well, especially when you change the story by giving it a new twist waiting for the plot to evolve and build its own path; in short, if you're going to adapt something to the big screen please do it with care and with the same affection and detail that the original story has, don't just try to capture the same thing hoping for positive results because that's not how the movies work, and Death Note's film adaptation is proof of that.
Death Note is without a doubt one of my favorite animes of all times because of the masterly construction of its story, a story where different emotions and points of view converge but stand out together creating a tremendous and almost addictive atmosphere. In Death Note (the anime) we don't stop to be surprised with the constant turns that the plot develops, always happens something unexpected every time better than the previous fact and the series achieves perfectly that our emotions collide because we don't know from whom side we should put ourselves, an intelligent series and with a mature plot with no continuity errors.
Unfortunately, the creators of the film did not manage to transmit that in their production...
Like the anime, this film focuses on the life of a super gifted and highly intelligent young man who finds a mysterious notebook that is accompanied by a kind of death demon, a notebook that this young man can use to take the life of whoever he wants, a notebook that despite having certain rules gives this young man the immense power to kill whoever he wants in the way he wants.
From there the young Light begins to use the notebook to get rid of all kinds of people he considers evil, criminals, mobsters and abusers, the young man embarks on a kind of purge whose main purpose is to turn the world into a kind of perfect garden where only "good" people live. From all the deaths that this young man causes hundreds of questions begin to arise in society because the deaths begin to become more usual, each time we see how the death rate increases while crimes go down something positive, but at the same time dozens of sects and satanic cults begin to proliferate around the world causing another kind of havoc because these people begin to personify Light as a kind of God they use to sow fear in society.
It should be noted that at the same time that Light and his girlfriend play gods, the police begin a hunt to find the person responsible for these deaths, hunting that leads them to hire a young investigator whose intelligence is at the level of Light and ends up discovering and uncovering all this wave of murder that has taken over the world under the pretext of making it a place where good people prevail over criminals and people who commit bad acts.
The plot is like a train over accelerated, everything happens extremely fast, so much so that we don't know the real motivations of the characters when it comes to acting and above all we don't know the characters either, we only have a couple of young people without any apparent emotion that begins to kill thousands of people without any kind of fear when it comes to acting. The plot of the film does not have an appropriate pace, does not give us time to digest the social background and instead tries to fix everything with cliché scenes where we see the confrontation of the protagonist with his nemesis, a nemesis that is not justified either, and that is only doing its job, we do not really see an effort to capture Light, he just wants to finish the investigation and move on to the next thing.
Unlike the anime, this film didn't entertain me at all and on the contrary I ended up hating it, I even saw it twice to analyze it better, but the truth is that nothing stands out or is worth it. The film takes a super interesting plot and turns it into something totally empty and emotionless. The plot of the anime stands out because it is meticulous, developed with care, each element is placed so that it stands out at some point to represent something important in the story, while in the film there is no care, everything seems low budget, we do not get to see those moments of suspense and intense drama that in the anime do we see, in the film everything is taken to a more superficial shot where everything is badly done.
Even Light/Kira is different from the anime here we have a young man who rather than emanate an aura of intelligence, cruelty and even psychopathic traits, what emanates is stupidity and an absurd confidence that leads him to think that everything will go well. In the film Light doesn't think he is the best because he has prepared himself to be the best and because he is always in front of other people, here the character thinks he is the best just because he has the notebook, the creators fail to build a character that in the anime is the best of the series because of its cold look and its incredible ability to plan every detail of what happens, here they don't manage to make the character stand out and instead they end up putting him in a loving relationship that is totally different from reality, sometimes it seems that even his girlfriend is capable of manipulating him, something that is unthinkable for those who have seen the anime and know how the character really is.
Maybe if you don't see the anime you'll find the film interesting, but the truth is that there's nothing outstanding about it. The settings are depressing, quick shots that do not show the intensity of the scenes in depth and that are made with dark effects only to try to create an atmosphere of dark suspense, which ends up making the scenes not visible enough.
More than recommending the film, I recommend that you take the time to see the anime because it is worth it and not this pathetic attempt to take advantage of a story wonderfully built around mature, intense and intelligent characters. Don't waste time because in this film you will only find a poorly developed plot that seems to have run out of time because it has a too fast pace that doesn't truly let us understand the whole spectrum of conflicts that are happening at the same time.
