Tuesday, April 25, 2006

O for Oh brother, he's talking about that movie again!

I finally saw V for Vendetta on Saturday. We had some spare time, and I was thrilled to see that it was still playing in the theatre, so I whined and begged Andrea until she relented.

There are no spoilers in this post. For once.

And, now that I’ve seen it, I can see why there are such mixed reviews about this movie. I have mixed feelings about it myself. (Of course, if I had a dollar for every time I posted a review on this blog and said that I had “mixed feelings” about the thing I was reviewing, I’d be a rich man, and would be able to afford to blog full time.) Some thoughts:
  • As hoped—and expected—Natalie Portman did a great job. She’s a really good actress, and she didn’t disappoint.
  • On the other hand, her character in the movie, Evey, was superfluous. In fact, Evey actually took away from the plot; the point about V’s character is that he is not really supposed to be human, per se. He’s more the “embodiment of an idea” than he is a man. And yet they then introduce Evey as a love interest for him?!? Andrea and I were hoping for more from her character, and were disappointed that we didn’t get it.
  • I liked the way they showed England as a totalitarian state. I mean, it’s nothing new if you’ve read Orwell’s 1984—or countless other books on the subject—but they contextualized it by taking what’s currently happening in the States, and showing what might happen if they just keep down that path.
  • There are lots of scenes of men speaking in dry, measured, British tones. It’s very soothing, and if you’re tired when you see the movie, it might put you to sleep.
  • They’ve gone the direction of so many other movies lately, and made the violence cartoonish. When someone gets stabbed in this movie, he doesn’t just bleed; that would be too boring. Instead, the wound explodes, with blood and gore shooting across the room.
So, all in all, with the mixed feelings, I came away liking the movie, and Andrea came away disappointed.

0 comments: