I loosely followed the controversy that followed the announcement of Netflix's film adaptation of Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata's 'Death Note' manga. Calls of whitewashing, as well as general negativity surrounding its very existence were the most people had to say.
These days, I'm forever sceptical of film adaptations that come from either videogame or anime/manga source material. I don't think every film will be terrible, I believe that eventually someone will come along and fully understand the best ways to combine the source material in a way that fits a one hour and forty minute-long production.
Netflix's Death Note successfully distances itself from the plethora of other failed live-action attempts, and I'd be lying if I said there were tons of things wrong with the film that made me enjoy it less than I could have. Primarily, everything wrong with Death Note can be summed up in the following: Netflix's Death Note feels like two hours of various live-action events within in the source material, but condensed in such a way that it feels like a trailer for an upcoming show. And honestly, a show would have been a much, much stronger approach to bringing Death Note to the west in a live-action form.
I believe director Adam Wingard did his absolute best, and his vision of Death Note being in a slightly cyberpunk world certainly fits, it's just a shame that its story feels so rushed with poor use of exposition to explain particular things that needed far more explaining. Performances are another positive of the film: I can't say any performance was done poorly given the little screen time everyone actually had; generally, it was too hard to really understand character intentions and there was no real cat-and-mouse investigative approach following character L and protagonist Light. But once again, the performances weren't awful.
If you're a fan of the anime/manga, I think you will be quite disappointed in the lack of depth in Netflix's Death Note, but it's still very much worthy of watching. Overall, it isn't a bad film, it just doesn't fully grasp what made its source material so popular in the first place.
