This film uses the setting of the Death Note films, but lacks what made Death Note so fascinating: an intricate, constantly-changing storyline involving extremely intelligent enemies and their intellectual warfare. L change the WorLd feels kind of like a Godzilla film in which Godzilla is nowhere to be seen and Mothra appears for a few seconds at the beginning. I can't help but feel that it probably would have actually been a better movie if it were not Death Note-related.

Naomi Misora, Watari, Misa and Ryuuk were given cameos, but nothing much was really done with their characters and the film would hardly be any different if they never appeared. Furthermore, what happened to Kira's influence on the world?! Right after burning the Death Notes, we see L helping solve various murder cases, and the main antagonists belong to an organization that must have been planning their attack while Kira was quite active. Not a single mention of Kira's influence is made, and it seems entirely as though the writers forgot that crime was supposed to have gone way down because of people's fear of Kira.

Apparently the film's acting was praised in Japan, but anyone who speaks English will be pulled out of the film by the entirely emotionless (and quite frequent) English dialogue. I'm guessing that most of the actors didn't know what they were saying and were just pronouncing the sentences syllabically.

Numerous opportunities for connections with Death Note were thrown away. The only two throwbacks (aside from the early cameos) were a villain with a scar similar to Mello's and the fact that, at the end of the movie, L names the boy he's been taking care of Near. "Near is a good name," he says. Of course, L change the WorLd's Near looks and acts nothing like the Nate River of the series. When L was trying to figure out the meaning of the letters "MK", I was hoping (and expecting) them to stand for "Mihael Keehl", but there wasn't even a passing reference to the name for fans to recognize.

A couple of moments in the film that were supposed to be serious made me laugh out loud. The first was when L tried standing up straight with triumphant music playing... and several loud spinal cracking noises. The second was when L leaps from the stairs into the airplane in slow motion.

I do consider L change the WorLd worth seeing for Death Note aficionados, but I don't think most fans will feel it lives up to anything else in the franchise.

I haven't read the manga series, but I really enjoyed the two Death Note movies. L for me, was an interesting character, however, I was very skeptic to how this movie could possibly work, since a super-weird character like him usually only work in smaller roles, and the mysteriousness was the underlying charm of L in those two movies. I had an extremely low expectation in this film, and to my surprise, it was even worse than what I had imagined.

First of all... the story is absolutely worthless. It's something you would expect from a Hollywood B-movie or a low budget made-for-TV movie. The original series had been an exciting cat-and-mouse game of wits and deception. Even if they didn't want to re-use the Death Note, battle of wits is vital to the success of a movie like this, and for a character like L to reach full potential. This on the other hand, was L in a MIB ripoff organization in a cheesy biohazard plot with really dumb villains. As if that alone wasn't enough, they also added typical Japanese corniness: psychotic killers with environmental nonsense ideology and how the entire human race should be purged.

Horrible overacting by the supporting cast and poor direction didn't help. This was not a movie meant to be directed by a horror movie director. That "death in the lab" scene was totally corny, and the director kept trying to make Maki, the little girl, seem like a child psycho killer you would see in horror movies, and it was totally unconvincing and stupid. Fukuda Mayuko, who played Maki is an extremely talented up-and-coming actress, and I am very upset this director put her through a crap role like this.

I loved the final scene where L attempts to stand up straight since he found a new hope in life and wanted to live longer, and I can tell Matsuyama Kenichi tried really hard in this movie. He did great job. But "no matter how gifted, one cannot change the world alone", he couldn't save this movie alone.