Listen, I don't really go here. I love Japanese cinema. I have read one or two mangas and I would consider watching an anime at some point. I never read Death Note. Never saw the anime. Never even knew what it was about until like 2019. I didn't just have no expectations going into the film, I also had no prior knowledge. (I always wondered why pictures of the notebook always had an apple...)

My guess is, the manga/anime is better in certain key ways. The film had one huge glaring problem: Light's character development occurred in so many huge jolts that it repeatedly defied logic and believability. I've watched the first episode of the drama series and that one seems to be taking a smoother route. Basically, I can see how he could potentially get to where he got at the end, but the path was not A, B, C... It wasn't even A,C, E... It was like A,V,Z... And we lose so much skipping those essential parts of his arc.

The other issue I had with this film was the character L. Again, my guess is that if Death Note was a part of my cultural consciousness then I would already, like, KNOW. But it isn't. So I don't. As such, his unnecessarily aggressive antagonism made no sense because no time was ever spent addressing the nuances of his character beyond an obsession with sweets.

Anyway. I really like Fujiwara Tatsuya. He was excellent in Memoirs of a Murderer. He made a convincing Light. I would have enjoyed watching him really dig his teeth into the many layers of that character. And I prefer the subtler acting of the guy who plays L in this film to the almost silly behavior of the guy in the live action drama series. But I guess we can't have our cake and eat it too.

Probably better to skip this one. As an adaptation of the source material, my guess is it's not very satisfactory. As a stand alone film, it's not very good, unfortunately.