I finally got around to seeing
V for Vendetta and my reaction: meh
First, let's look at the movie's star, at least it's advertised one, and that's visual effects. Personally I hardly feel there is anything ground-breaking here and the camera work as a whole left very little positive impact on me. Sure the special-effects were on par with what you'd expect from a Wachowski Brothers film but there was no watershed achievement or visuals. Now we're at the time in cinema where if you have to rely on effects you also need to have a skilled camera eye behind the lense and I felt this movie lacked that. It's not that there were a lot of shots that were "bad" but few also left an impression on me. Now some may counter that you should be unaware of the camera movements and that they should flow appropriately with the story and with this I agree. However, 95% or more of film-goers don't examine a film with such detail as I do upon even a first viewing and I'm am very prone to notice such things, especially the first time I see it. Usually for me, the first time I see a movie is for "dissection" and the latter ones are more for enjoyment if I determine it being worthy of it.
Other technical problems with film was the editing, especially in the first half. I felt almost winded by the cuts even though they weren't too quickly paced. It was more like they just did not flow at all and it's something I certaintly picked up on. After looking up the Editors resume, I can see why I wasn't impressed with his work here.
Examining the story in the first half is almost painful. Someone needs to teach these guys how to develop characters without making them just say what they feel; they might as well be doing voiceover after voiceover because at least in that case the characters themselves wouldn't sound like they can't converse in the real world. The character that best embodies this flaws is the title character V who acts as a terrorist and goes through painstaking means to convince not only Natalie Portman's character but also the audience that violence and terrorism can be justified. What the Wachowksi brothers might have known but certaintly didn't exhibit their knowledge of is the fact that violence is a tool for communication and has been used as one for some time. Instead of doing so subtley or leading by example they just bludgeon us over the head with the idea and it gets stale and repetitive and frankly, insults the audience's intelligence.
It isn't until the second half of the movie that there are some pleasant twists and even though they weren't all too suprising they still were "the right move" for the screenplay. Unforunately, it seemed everytime a good or even very good scene occurred it was followed by bad one which brought the film back down another peg.
As a whole the movie came out feeling like a combination of several other films and books meshed together with recent instances. V's attitude towards having no fear or regard for the common man was very similar to Tyler Durden's "it's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything" philosophy. However, the difference here is that V has a sensitive side which is almost unwarrented seeing how the government "made him a monster" yet he hardly lives up to his mantra of being free of fear or emotion. Overall, he came off as a cross between the Phantom of the Opera and Tyler Durden but didn't have the screen presence of either. The big, bad government was obviously based from
1984 and the whole plague and disease thing wreaked of recent biological war talks. They were sure to mention riots and survielence and air and train attacks because they're all relevent to today and when you decide to add all these variables together you don't get a coherent cinematic movement but thinly vieled political notions that side with everyone. In other words, they took a movie about "terrorism" and took the safe way out.
The best metaphor I could use when describing it is watching the movie is like watching someone running a race and tripping right off the starting blocks. At times it quickly regains its balance beautifully only to lose its balance again. All of the good points of the movie don't build up to something great because they're all trying to make up for the last poor notion or scene. By the end, the film may regain it's balance or may not. Either way it's not convincing enough for me to give it a full recommendation but not bad enough to damn it completely.
**1/2 out of ****
