Fridae

Based on a popular manga, the Death Note movies released in recent years were huge box-office hits in Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea and other Asian territories. Its superbly suspenseful storyline about teenagers with the power to kill anyone just by writing that person's name in a "death notebook" captured the imagination of many adolescent viewers.

Now that the saga has concluded, the filmmakers are eager to squeeze what they still can from the lucrative franchise. So they've spun off a movie with L (Kenichi Matsuyama) as the main character battling to stop eco-terrorists from unleashing a virus to rid the world of mankind.

Unfortunately, despite the many unusual charms of the eccentric genius L, this film is fairly generic. Now that the deadly chess game that L played with Kira in the first two Death Note movies has ended, L does not have a worthy adversary to battle his wits against. As a result, the film plays like an ordinary action romp where L must summon his intellect to prevent a global crisis.

Well, he can't prevent our yawns.