I love all the Anime and Manga fans.. they will never be happy with anything that is adapted so they should always be ignored, that doesn't mean they are always wrong, it simply means they will never be objective. I've watched the Amine and live action Japanese versions they were good imo, this isn't by any means great it has many flaws Light is horribly cast, nothing to do with whitewashing it's not set in Japan so that point is irrelevant. It's horribly cast because the 23 yr old guy is a bad actor, when he first encounters Ryuk, who is horribly underused, his reactions made me laugh it's that bad. The Mia and Light storyline is horribly rushed and inexplicably foul mouthed. Not everything is terrible though. I thought L was decent, the gore level is fairly high in comparison to the Japanese live version movies. The story has a few decent changes that could have worked if the acting was better and Willem Dafoe's Ryuk is good but as I already mentioned criminally underused. Not sure about the electronica soundtrack I didn't love it or hate it. The potential was there to make something great but the minute they cast Light it was on a slippery slope.. I really can't stress how bad a performance this guy dials in. I was really disheartened to see on his bio that he's involved in a few what initially looked like half decent upcoming projects. Anyway I didn't out and out hate it because I wanted to like it from the start, I just felt it was an opportunity missed for a great 6 or 8 parter instead of a poorly executed movie. I gave it 5 because the concept and some aspects of the production which were good were let down by others.
Review of Death Note
