I just attended the North American premiere of this latest live-action Death Note installment and right away my whole summer seems to have improved.

Right off the bat, though, an important clarification:  this is definitely, as the title would imply, a movie about L and one of his stand-alone adventures, not a rich continuation of the Death Note saga per se.  And since for me L’s character has always been the most compelling thing about the franchise, that suits me fine.  In fact, I wouldn’t mind seeing an ongoing series in any medium that focused solely on his exploits, and can only hope that perhaps Vertigo Films will develop the English language Death Note remake with an eye to this possibility.

Not familiar with the character?  Well, the short-form description involves referencing Sherlock Holmes as the archetype of the super-cerebral, idiosyncratic crime-fighter who’s alienated from society partly by dint of that same mega-intellect.  One of the many virtues of L: Change the World, though, is that the title character is taken out of isolation, loping awkwardly through the world at large like a lost brother of Quasimodo and Groucho Marx, and growing through his interaction with a variety of secondary characters.

Those Death Note fans who didn’t enjoy the previous live-action adaptations will either love this film for not tinkering too much with the central anime or manga storylines, or perhaps dismiss it as a fluffy spin-off.  While I’m sure there will be plenty who will weigh in on both sides, I’d like to draw attention to the strengths of this new release in its own terms.  Directed by the celebrated Hideo Nakata in such a way that his horror expertise is leveraged in only a few key scenes, L: Change the World is actually a straight-ahead exercise in action and suspense.  And what an exercise it is.  The combination of humor, smarts, and star power (lead Kenichi Matsuyama is wonderful in every scene) is pretty irresistible—in fact, I haven’t had this much fun at the movies since Iron Man.

Another character from contemporary pop culture who invites an obvious comparison to L is Gregory House, M.D.  Although of course L is far more personable than the good doctor, this film’s bio-thriller plot about a world-destroying virus makes that parallel more pertinent.

  Actually, make that a “human-destroying” virus.  In an interesting variation on Death Note’s central theme—when is it okay to kill in the service of a “righteous” cause?—the bad guys here want to eliminate humankind in order to save the planet.  These motivations are not too far removed on the moral scale from those of L’s arch-adversary, Kira, and is just one of many examples of how the script cleverly addresses Death Note’s core following while also satisfying newcomers.

That’s not to say that scribes Kiyomi Fujii and Hortoshi Kobayashi don’t cut a few corners or get lazy once in a while.  In one sequence, when all of Japan is hunting young Mayuko Fukuda (believing her to be a kind of Typhoid Mary), I was wondering why L didn’t simply have her don a baseball cap to make her less recognizable.  And there are some problems on a larger scale, too.  As with many action-thrillers involving global-level conspiracies, the script avoids reality when it fails to bring in world-class heavies—mercenaries, contract killers, etc.—to handle the villains’ dirty work.  Instead, we have the spectacle of mild-mannered lab scientists turning an extremely sharp corner to become shotgun-toting thugs, apparently having no problem adding blood-letting to their job descriptions.  Such issues can sometimes be overlooked in manga or perhaps anime, but live-action films hold up a more powerfully reflective surface to the audience, so if we don’t see the characters in a genre feature behaving like real people—like us—you can count on there being a disconnect.

Still, these are probably minor quibbles in the grand scheme of things.  With crackerjack editing, and ace production values, which include a lush, pulse-pounding score, there’s the temptation to call L: Change the World “James Bond-lite.”  But to do so would amount to dismissing an unexpected strength of this movie:  its many kid-centered scenes that alternately provoke laughs and tug at the heart.  Like only the very best Hollywood entertainments, L: Change the World provides high-gloss escapist fun that should appeal to a wide range of moviegoers.

Note:  L: Change the World is screening on June 24 as part of the New York Asian Film Festival.