...a somewhat old-fashioned adventure flick, filled with action, humor, romance, politics, and the kind of swashbuckling that hasn't been seen in movies for many, many years.
5.) The movie was too damn long.
6.) The police inspector talking about being able to "feel everything" was stupid blathering.
7.) The action sequences were terrible. I couldn't understand anything other than the fact that some people were dying.
8.) V's mumbo-jumbo about cause and effect was a horrible repeat from the "Matrix" trilogy. Yes, there's cause and effect in the world, but so what? The Wachowskis don't have anything substantive to say about the matter, no matter how many philosophical treatises they've read.
9.) Forcing a love story into the overall narrative was lame. The Wachowskis think that they're badasses, but their movies always end with "I did this because I love you" speeches. This is as conventional as Hollywood movies get. This movie gets a 3 out of 10 from me.
The Movie According to Tim Raynor:
I thought the film had a good look about it, but it just delivers too convoluted of a story. It rarely makes any points to sink our teeth into and ends up being more confusing rather than our feeling rallied behind the main character. It is really no more than a simple tale of revenge, but it has very little substance, or it is too vague to make one feel like rooting for the hero.
I can't say I had issues with the acting as it seems passable enough. The action sequencing wasn't as bad as "Batman Begins," and you could at least see what was happening; but for the love of God, GIVE us some action! And as I said, I also liked the look and art of the film. It's unfortunate it couldn't have had a better flow instead of bouncing us around in additional tales to create a bigger picture of . . . well . . . nothing! Perhaps the story should have had better focus on the backdrop, which was government control; however, instead, we get a more personal story of one guy's vengeance, along with Portman who just adds more trash to a story that is already a mess.
Oh, well, it's not the most major disappointment I have ever seen. Generally speaking, it wasn't that bad and certainly not a campy film for this genre; it was just dull. Rating: 5/10.
The Movie According to John J. Puccio:
I found "V for Vendetta" a somewhat old-fashioned adventure flick, filled with action, humor, romance, politics, and the kind of swashbuckling that hasn't been seen in movies for many, many years (and don't say "for good reason"). It's a combination of "Zorro," "1984," "The Phantom of the Opera," "Beauty and the Beast," and "The Count of Monte Cristo," with only Doug Fairbanks, Errol Flynn, or Robert Donat missing from the title role. What more could you want? Well, OK, maybe a little less talk.
At the heart of the film is the old standby, the revenge plot. V has been cruelly experimented upon, tortured, and disfigured; now, he's out to exact his vengeance, and his vengeance is exact. Then, too, he's out to topple a corrupt government and to avenge the government's murder of tens of thousands of its own people. These motives seem noble enough. There was some criticism of the film at the time of its release about the story glamorizing terrorism, but V is a terrorist fighting injustice, the way Zorro did, so for a romantic adventure, it works. As the Bard said, "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." America's revolutionary leaders were patriots on one side of the Atlantic, traitors on the other. V is a freedom fighter of the best kind, and we don't have to agree with his violent methods to appreciate his motivations.
The movie is long at almost two-and-a-quarter hours, but I never noticed the time going by. It wasn't like: How long are they going to take to get to this island? How long are they going to be on this island? How many more dinosaurs are they going to find? And how many more sunsets do we have to endure? "V for Vendetta" mixes a good deal of dialogue with healthy doses of action to produce a fairly well-rounded story. It's not just stuff blowing up every two minutes.
I liked Hugo Weaving as V, even if you never actually see him without his mask. He could have been Hugo Winterhalter for all I knew, but I loved his voice and gestures. He's a quintessential masked avenger, using knives the way Zorro used a sword or the Lone Ranger used a six-gun. Yet he's a tragic hero as well, a man scarred for life physically and emotionally, who has, nevertheless, not lost his humanity and can still feel love and compassion for those who deserve it.
I liked the revenge plot, tinged as it is with political overtones that can just as easily be ignored as applied to modern-day situations. It's easy to see Orwell's Big Brother in John Hurt's Adam Sutler, England's tyrannical leader. Big Brother in this case could be Stalin or Hitler, or it could just as well be Margaret Thatcher or George W. Bush. Certainly, the ideas of a politician creating a disaster in order to muster votes, stifle dissent, curtail civil rights, and assume a despotic rule are there in the movie for the taking, or the viewer can simply sit back, ignore the politics, and enjoy the daring deeds.
This is not to say I didn't have a few concerns, however. I know one should never question the logic of an old-time romantic adventure, but this one does stretch credibility more than a tad. For instance, I kept wondering how a guy so disfigured that he has to wear a mask all the time buys his groceries. I mean, it's not like he has a houseboy who runs his errands for him. And it's not like he can just walk into any store with or without a mask on. Does he steal all his food? And he's bought countless art objects: How did he manage that? And, more important, where does he get all his money? More thefts we're never told about? And his house: Early on V says it's underground, but later we see that it has a very high rooftop balcony, too. And where'd he get such an elaborate place? Did he inherit it or answer an ad in the newspaper? And don't the neighbors ever wonder about him going to and fro? And as for his clearing out an entire tunnel by himself, even if it took him ten years as he says it did, come on! One guy? And nobody noticed? And the entire government police force fails to notice the excavation, but a detective at the end of the movie finds it in two minutes? Yeah, well, nobody questions a guy in a bat suit, either, so I guess we can suspend our disbelief and go along with it. I did and really had no trouble.
Moreover, Natalie Portman is lovely, and I never experienced a problem with her accent. Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture" is an appropriate symbol for triumph over oppression (the composer premiered it in 1882 to commemorate the seventieth anniversary of Russia's victory over Napoleon, and everybody's been using it for similar purposes ever since, so why not the Wachowskis). And the CGI special effects are kept to a minimum, meaning right away that the film has more substance than most action thrillers.
Put it another way: In terms of Wachowski films, this one is a darned sight better than their last two "Matrix" efforts. Not that that is any big compliment.
Well, obviously, different people see things differently, and certainly Tyler, Eddie, and Tim saw "V for Vendetta" differently from William and me. On DVDTOWN's rating scale, I'd give "V for Vendetta" a 7. The movie is filled with great, fun derring-do, if maybe a little too much chatter.
Video:
As usual with recent releases from Warner Bros., the "V" transfer benefits from a high bit rate, enhanced for widescreen TVs. The standard-definition picture, stretching to a ratio of about 2.18:1 across my television, looks quite good, though sometimes displaying a touch of blur, perhaps to reinforce the romantic angle. Colors are slightly subdued for the most part, yet they remain fairly natural, while facial hues can lean to the pinkish. Because it's a new movie, the master WB used for the transfer was probably as perfect as it could be, with only the original print's inherent film grain noticeable.
Audio:
The first thing that almost can't be avoided from the outset of this film is that the Dolby Digital 5.1 sound is very bass heavy, very dynamic, and very robust. Although a good deal of the movie contains dialogue, those action sequences rock the house. I had almost no trouble, though, understanding anything that was said (except V's silly, alliterative verses at the beginning of the film); otherwise, I never found Weaving's voice as V an issue.
However, after watching several HD-DVDs with their clearer, tauter Dolby Digital Plus sonics prior to watching "V," I found the regular DD 5.1 sounding a bit soft and woolly. Alas, the dangers of comparison viewing and listening, I suppose. Nevertheless, the rear-channel information on the disc is very good, with an expansive sense of surround and noises coming at one from every direction. The movie is fun to listen to.
Extras:
I watched the Two-Disc Special Edition, which is remarkably devoid of serious extras. Disc one contains the feature film; English and French spoken languages; English, French, and Spanish subtitles, thirty-three scene selections, but no chapter insert; and the fifteen-minute featurette, "Freedom! Forever! Making V for Vendetta." On the featurette, one learns a little something about the adaptation of the movie from the 1980s' comic books by Alan Moore and David Lloyd, but not much.
Disc two contains several more relatively short featurettes. The first is "Designing the Near Future," seventeen minutes on production planning, sets, models, etc. The second is "Remember, Remember: Guy Fawkes and The Gunpowder Plot," ten minutes of history on the historical character from 1605. The third featurette is "England Prevails: V for Vendetta and the New Wave in Comics," fourteen minutes on the history and evolution of comic books from the mid 1950s to the present. Finally, there is a Cat Power music video, "I Found a Reason"; a widescreen theatrical trailer; and a not-so-hidden bonus, a two-minute "SNL" short, "Saturday Night Live" rap, starring Natalie Portman.
The two discs come housed in a double, slim-line keep case, further enclosed in an attractively embossed slipcover. I still don't understand why if WB can afford a slipcover, they can't include a chapter insert.
Parting Thoughts:
Anyway, there you have it: One guy, Will, who liked the film reasonably well. Another guy, me, who liked the film even more. Two guys, Tyler and Eddie, who hated the film. And yet a fifth guy, Tim, who thought it was just ordinary. Take your pick. Since Will did the main review, I thought he should get the final say on rating it. To heck with compromises or averaging; this is a democracy of one.
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