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V For Vendetta
Oh dear, I'm in the minority again. I just came out of a poorly conceived, sloppily made mess of a political statement made into a movie - but my buddies came out of the same movie having seen a good fun action flick. What's a critic to do?
V for Vendetta is nowhere near as good as it could have been. Childish, heavy-handed and clumsy, it fails in every significant area. The effects in the finale are quite impressive, but I was so detached by then that I didn't care. Even the fight scenes are pathetic. In the sewer scene none of his adversaries even bother moving as they're popped off one by one - it's no more than pretentious nonsense. Inexplicably though, it's garnering a following and so I have to reluctantly predict that you're quite likely to enjoy it, despite everything. When you do, please explain to me why, because it's beyond me. I enjoyed this film: I think the average moviegoer will enjoy it: Testosterone Satisfaction Rating: - some pyrotechnics and silly scraps. To enjoy this film you should: have more in common with the people who are about to post comments than with me.
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Your commentsThe comments printed here are not necessarily the views of Forwardcharm!
Let's not forget that this is based on a cult graphic novel of the same name, so remember it's another comic flick.
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Well, I have to stay true to my literary integrity, tell you what I saw and let you make your own mind up whether you want
to waste your hard-earned cash - er ... I mean, if you want to give it a try.
The main character, a mysterious chap by the
name of V, wears a solid mask the whole time. The obvious ramification is that he never makes any facial expressions -
you can't even see a set of eyes, so he comes across as far less flamboyant than he must appear in the comic book from
which he came. Voiced by Hugo Weaving (Agent Smith from The Matrix), it could be anyone under the mask. The voice
doesn't sound like it's flattened in the way a mask would, so why would the studio pay for Mr Weaving to hang around all
the time? It's probably Tim the tea boy. However, this cosmetic difficulty pales into insignificance compared to the
presentation of the plot. There's a sense of being set in the future, but I saw hardly any visual cues
of that. Sure, the registration number on the police car is a different style and font (whoop-di-doo), but it rather loses
its effect when it's on an MG ZT - a car that's already out of production. Are we supposed to deduce that it's actually
in the present, how things could have gone if - say - the Nazis had won the war? It's far from clear what we're supposed to
think. Maybe we're not supposed to think. In actual fact, it's a view of the present from the writer's standpoint
in the 1980s, as I discovered when researching the movie afterwards. Would it have been so hard to tell us that?
Natalie Portman is the other star "Evey". Here she tries an English accent and makes a pretty good fist of it some of the
time - but there's the occasional visit to South Africa and she knocks on the door of the Antipodes more than once.
Whilst acting well, it's a struggle for her to overcome the vast deficiencies in
her character's development, not to mention the daft storyline she has to endure. The prison scenario, for instance -
which I can't describe for fear of ruining it - is baffling in its construction and ends with quite the most ridiculous
line - "God is in the rain." That was a head-in-hands moment if ever there was one. The script on the whole is quite
dreadful - the odd political soundbite is quite effective, but it's so transparently written by Americans pretending to
be English that it's painful.
The clues are there - plummy Englishmen saying "god damn", over-use of the word bollocks (I admit, it's a very funny word,
but we Brits have got used to it and use it sparingly) and, crime of crimes, an English copper pronouncing "lever" as if
it has two Vs.
