V for Vendetta

Did I watch the same movie everyone else did? How, for the love of god, is this movie garnering such genuine praise from more than a handful of people? Surely we are not a nation of 6 year olds.

Yes, the political implications are superficially interesting, but James McTeigue is a joke of a director. He handles the mildly provocative story of an extremist madman with the same regard in which a fat kid handles a piece of cake. He gobbles at every corner of the plate without ever once stopping to savor the emotions the movie was always, in every single scene, lacking. Satire is only good when you laugh at the subject matter and the reality it implies, not when you're laughing at the ineptitude to make such implications.

But I guess all of this was preempted by the Wachowski's screenplay and their incessant need to try to pound it into the viewers brain that the physicalities don't matter as much as what they symbolize. A noble statement, but V for Vendetta is only a symbol for incompetent filmmaking. We feel absolutely nothing for these characters. Not one iota of emotion or relatability. McTeigue works a scene with the same seamless finesse as my first kiss - he just doesn't know how to do it, closes his eyes and plunges in. And he gets the cheek.

Was there not a dime left in the budget after it got pillaged by an over-charging effects department for some solid music? The classical was perfect, why wouldn't it be, but the rest of the musical choices were simply bad music. The blocking was clearly evident of McTeigue's second-unit roots as there was little to no continuity of style between any two shots in the movie. I burst out into a fit of laughter when there was a rain drop POV shot of Portman getting drenched - for absolutely no reason whatsoever. Oh, and of course it had to be intercut with V doing his impersonation of Darth Vader's Episode III scream of pain.

The flashback sequence of the film, which lasts eons longer than it should, is about as functional as Stephen Hawking's legs. It was the rock bottom of the film and it occured with close to half the movie left to go. Pathetic.

Universally contrieved, V for Vendetta banks solely on the hope that the viewer will be a person who is already convinced that the politics of the film are accurate and reflective of Western society and that this staunch belief will allow them to forgive the rest of the film's omnipotent shortcommings. A complete and utter failure of a film.

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