The big issue with Death Note wasn't even that it was set in America with a white cast...its that none of the characters acted at all like they were supposed to. Light is a bullied social outcast...which is basically the antithesis of who his character is and where his god complex comes from and makes a lot of the story completely incoherent thematically. If you changed the characters names the movie would still suck but maybe if they had leaned even more into Americanizing it and just did a completely different story with the same premise of the death note it could have at least existed on its own independantly of the Anime/Manga.