L: change the WorLd (2008)

Powerful

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

The acting in this movie is really good.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

This movie is a contrived, violent, gory and foul-mouthed (at least in the translations) insult to the legacy of the Death Note series. While using the same actor to play L... his actions are over the top. He types like a monkey, walks like an ape, and has nothing of the flair of his original representation of L.Intelligence and an original story made the original Death Note a unique work of art. This film contains none of such. Instead it devolves to a basic action / gore thriller that conflicts with the original story line. If we are to accept this story as true, the would have to be two "L"s... identical twins both working non-stop around the clock-- one to deal with this virus and the other to stop Kira. That of course is nonsense and jumps the shark into the troposphere.This is a poor effort-- poor enough that I give it my rare 1-star two-thumbs down rating that I usually reserve for the worst of schlock movies. This isn't bad enough to be good... and not nearly good enough to be Death Note. As much as I like this actor, even he couldn't pull this one out of the dumpster.Parental warning: this should by no means be considered a family-worthy film. (Nor even adult-worthy, for that matter.) If you enjoyed Death Note and consider it one of the most original movies ever made... this is likely to be a considerable disappointment.

This is movie is extremely average with nothing much in it. It's trying to use the success of Death Note to try to sell itself. I had already read and heard reviews for this movie being horrible. So I had very very very low expectations in this one. But the problem is when you see L , you really start expecting something smart, something intelligent. And you get highly disappointed :-( If they had made this movie without the Death Note characters , it would have be a bad movie. But using the same characters is even worse, as you tend to expect them to do their regular bit. Believe me, when you see L on the screen, you will start thinking that he is upto something, or he will come out with something smart and surprising. But no .. nothing like that at all. That is the reason why I gave it a 4. Unlike the earlier Death Notes : * there is hardly a plot * no brilliant moment at all in the movie* it goes a little sentimental at times * lines of L are very often useless * there is no Ryuk * there is no Light Yagami * emotional side of L is seen as he gets along with 2 childrenIn fact, I am going to stop talking about this movie at all. I'd like to mention at this point , that Death Note 1 and 2 were simply awesome !!!

First of all, I don't know why some people dis this movie- saying "This has nothing to do with Death Note". For the record, that's because it isn't supposed to have anything to do with Death Note.I went to HMV last weekend and when I saw this movie, I had to buy it- I am a huge fan of L and seeing the title and cover I thought this would be a good watch. I was right.From the beginning, I enjoyed this movie. I liked that the last days of L's life were spent solving a case,visiting Wammys and smiling?:D I also liked Near's appearance, and no offence but they weren't going to find a Thai boy with white hair. Near was very sweet and his liking for toys and genius ability showed during the course of the movie.Maki was an interesting character, by the end I had started to like her, In the beginning I despised her to be honest.I cried at the ending, it was very touching. Showing this was the end. L's final words were very moving and he actually smiled! L fans will enjoy this movie a lot, I think.All in all, this was a very good watch and I'm glad that I bought it.8/10.

I Liked "Death Note I/II" too much, both at conceptual level as well as executional level thus as soon as I saw the poster, I grabbed the movie. However, this movie was a disappointment to me as it laked all the good things of Death Notes movies such as tight paced plot, adequate and intriguing twists n turns, the mental battle between Kira and L and the Reaper.... For the starters, movie plot involves the last 23 days of legendary L as he tries to battle out a group of environmentalists whose plan is to make world a better place for living by spreading a deadly Virus (mixture of Ebola and Influenza virus) and thus reducing the size of ecological footprint of mankind by reducing the number of living people rather than researching new energy efficient technologies etc. Wow! what a bunch of green crusaders who do good by killing people (have not they thought of any thing else???) However, L successfully saves the day with the help of a small maths genius and a not-so-small daughter of an virologist. Though L tries to pull out the old charm but most of his acting is focused on acting goofy (read here, eating so nonstoppingly that makes the average viewer nauseating, and sit, walk and type with such an awkward body postures and movement that merely watching them, hurts). Another dampener is that there is no one intelligent enough to stretch L's mental abilities to the last point (as Kira did earlier) rather here L acts more like anyone secret service agents (he even throws something to save the lil kid in the movie). However the makers of this spin off must have forgotten that if it is any other secret service agent movie than please there are better options than watching almost physically disabled L. So in the end, it is a movie with a hole ridden plot that dwells more on mannerism of L rather than a good storyline. Come on Guys, Bring Kira Back Please and please Bring the Old L back, at least one more time.