V For Vendetta

[cron]

this was sin city all over again. new rule: unless you're david cronenberg or fumihiko sori you shouldn't be allowed to adapt comic books.  and fuck the rolling stones very much, tchaikovski rocked in this movie's musical department. that was the only scene i liked actually, parliament, and even that scene was dumbed down by adding four hundred billion fawkes' masks to it. way to rape the subtlety of a decent superhero story, wachowskis. i don't remember the comic being as naive as the movie was.

[©brad]

way to rape the subtlety of a decent superhero story, wachowskis. i don't remember the comic being as naive as the movie was.

i didn't mind the heavy-handedness in this. i haven't read the comic so i can't really comment on the adaptation, but maybe you could elaborate on how this was dumbed-down?

subtlety isn't always the best route to take, you know. sometimes it's good to get up and shout.

[cron]

i'm all for loudness  but in this case my sensation is that the wachowskis fucked up where they tried to mark their own touches to the story. v doesn't sends masks to every child and person in london. and then there's the pompous speech he gives at the beggining with  every word that starts with v in a pocket english dictionary. that's not in the comic, that's just show-off. if i'm a prostitute (evey's way more sexual in the comic) and get saved in the middle of the night by a guy in a mask and a hat i'd say that's impressive enough. there's more stuff, you never get to see any of v's scars. i didn't needed to see a crap 3D render of fulgore from killer instinct to explain his origin. i think the comic made a more concise point about what you mentioned , getting up and shout, than the movie did. nthat was what i liked about it. he's more of a moralist in the comic too, he condemns the anarchy he sort of puts the country through and you don't get that. here he ends up sounding like the hobo in the episode 'charity' from  Dilbert:
DILBERT:"excuse me , do i know you?"
HOBO:"i'm your neighbor, i'm your friend, i'm your relative, i'm the one you won't make eye contact with, the one you're afraid to say hello to."
DILBERT:"so in other words no."
HOBO: "meh."

[The Red Vine]

I understand some points you're making. I've never read the comic book, but a few of those things you mentioned didn't work well. if it weren't for the "too preachy" stuff, it would've been flat out great (cuz everything else here is top notch). but very good is good enough for me. and particularly with all the shit they're releasing this time of year, "Vendetta" is the best thing playing in wide markets. I really did like it a lot. 

[modage]

and then there's the pompous speech he gives at the beggining with  every word that starts with v in a pocket english dictionary. that's not in the comic, that's just show-off.

wow, i figured that part HAD to be from the comic because it seems like something that would work better on the page and notasmuch in the film.

[Kal]

Well... I must say I'm very happy and impressed...

I went in thinking it was going to be crap, and I enjoyed it very much. Yes it was predictable, sometimes cheesy, whatever you want... but very entertaining and clever at the same time. I loved Hugo Weaving and his monologues a la Agent Smith... it was like seeing the character reborn. And Natalie is always excellent.. although the accent wasnt great.

Overall I liked it a lot, and it was good to see that the Wachowskis are not a total fraud after all.

[Gamblour.]

This movie is damn entertaining, super liberal and up front about it. It's not liberal in an offensive way. There are few action scenes and they are pretty cool. If you want to know why this movie is worth seeing, there are two reasons, and they're below...

SPOILERS

This film, albeit up front with its message but not with its morals, which made it tolerable, has two scenes which make the entire thing worth it. There's the scene where V goes to kill the doctor from Larkhill. The minute she gets the rose to when we see V's face in the corner to when she dies, it's so beautiful and empathetic. I love that line V says, "I killed you ten minutes ago." Such a peaceful ending for a woman who truly regretted her actions.

The other scene/sequence is that in which Natalie Portman finds the toilet paper autobiography. The woman's story seemed so poignant and moving, and goddamn, I really wanted to cry. There's so much emotion behind her voice and the images are really amazing. The reveal that she's the woman we see at the camps is a nice touch. I loved it.

END SPOILERS

So yeah. V for Vendetta? More like T for Tepid.

(just kidding, I liked it, but I like that review more).

[Reinhold]

Spoilers

even though the wachowski fellas didn't direct this, i seems like James McTeigue attempted to make a few sequences look wachowski/matrix esque.  Although he obviously didn't emulate this very well, i still got that vibe during a few shots.
Does anyone know what I'm talking about, or was i way off base with this?

SPOILERS

agreed... the tracing of the knife movement, the shots of V jumping, etc. but that's not too far from what the comic shows.

[Neil]

Spoilers
SPOILERS
agreed... the tracing of the knife movement, the shots of V jumping, etc. but that's not too far from what the comic shows.

Yeah, see, i haven't read the comics, is that something you guys think i should check out? I'm very interested, but i was just curious as to know how great the comics are?

[Split Infinitive]

I agree with the comments on the brilliant use of the 1812 Overture and "Stree Fighting Man."  Those were two bright spots in an otherwise wretched film.  Here's my review, if anyone's interested:

V for Vendetta (2006)

After terrorists bombed the London subway system on July 7, 2005 ("7/7," as it's come to be called), the producers of V for Vendetta announced that they would be pushing back the release date of out respect for the victims. Making an allegorical film about the post-9/11 United States with a terrorist hero probably seemed like a good idea to the Wachowskis Brothers in 2004 and early 2005. Set an ocean away from New York, the sci-fi futuristic fable was too far-fetched to bear any direct relation to "Islamo-fascists" flying passenger planes into skyscrapers, right? The British wouldn't mind if we borrowed their capitol for a little ultraviolent political grandstanding, right?

We'll never really know. Apparently the filmmakers perceived a close enough correlation between the events in their movie and the suicide bombings of the London Underground (which factors integrally into the climax of Vendetta) to give their film an air of reticence, another nail in the coffin of this poorly-conceived adaptation of Alan Moore's masterpiece graphic novel.

Originally serialized throughout the 1980s, V for Vendetta savaged the rule of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative Party, alongside the paranoia of the waning days of the Cold War. As long as the governments of the West were willing to use the Soviets to symbolize an "Evil Empire," then Moore would respond in kind. His antihero V created himself in the comic as the symbolic, dehumanized answer to the Gestapo rhetoric of the government and their potentially fascist leanings.

From the moments of Natalie Portman's opening voiceover, it's clear that the Wachowskis' Vendetta is a different animal. More romantic and gallant than Moore's incarnation, the V of the film forges an uneasy relationship with Portman's Evey Hammond, one that blurs the lines between mentor/mentee, captor/captive, father/daughter, and lover/lover. Depending on the scene, one or another of these relationships will be foregrounded, but never satisfactorily integrated, making the relationship much less sophisticated and much more purely incestuous.

If not for the superlative skill of Hugo Weaving, V would be worse than an amalgamated cipher, he would be entirely flat. By far the film's strongest element, Weaving's crafty, theatrical performance melds with the Guy Fawkes mask V wears at all times. Almost overcoming the indecisiveness of the Wachowskis' script, Weaving makes V the very nexus of charisma, his versatile voice plucking hammy dialogue like strings on a warped cello.

Weaving is also the strongest living reminder that the film exists in a separate sphere from the book. We must follow Moore's example and sever completely any ties the film may have to the V for Vendetta that exists in the four-color world of the graphic novel.

Usually a forceful, appealing actress, Portman limps along with an overly studied, unconvincing accent and nothing but the story to tug her along. Not quite back in Star Wars territory, Evey is lifeless because she has no character outside of what she is called upon to do by V and by the polemical bent of the writers. The same is true of Stephen Rea, who shambles along valiantly like the pro he is to the substantial paycheck waiting at the other end of the shoot. Their performances sharply contrast with Weaving's, who reminds us with his vitality that the picture exists apart from the page, a simple fact clearly neglected by the rest of the cast and director James McTeigue, who will, by the grace of God, never direct another feature film.

Attempting to illustrate the regimented social fabric of a totalitarian regime, the sets and photography are unnaturally antiseptic. However, this aseptic aesthetic scrubs clean the texture of basic setting and exposition. The whole productions suffers from a look that can only be described as amateurish, as if the prop masters had no idea what the production designers were building.  It's worse than mundane: it's hollow—even V's hidden lair, the Shadow Gallery, which ought to be sarcous and haunting, but instead feels like an empty stage stacked with props, the only one of which with any substance being the iconic Wurlitzer jukebox that forms the core of V and Evey's emotional bond.

McTeigue's vacuous execution mirrors the vacant script, which is packed with wisps of potentially incendiary ideas that are mere loosely tied wet fuses. V dedicates himself to bringing down the evil, right-wing, fundamentalist government by engaging in some high-profile demolition antics intended to shake the complacent masses out of their stupor and into action... against what? Well, that's not entirely clear. V babbles on quite endlessly about freedom and oppression. We learn that the government is behind some mysterious plague that catalyzed the current, Hitler-like leader's ascent to power. But V's goals, like his motives, are murky. He hates the government for experimenting on him with the plague (which gave him mild superpowers, natch), and he certainly feels that the government has violated enough human rights to warrant a revolution. Beyond that, the film's protagonist has about as much coherence as a high school student's socialist manifesto.

Is V a socialist or an anarchist? The Wachowskis paint V as a freedom fighter driven by ideals, rather than a nutcase on a philosophically-fueled power trip, though the film's wrongheaded approach to his character is made abundantly clear by the aggrandizing of his fighting prowess (against several state workers who, while part of the problem, certainly did not deserve to be slaughtered like sheep) and the elaborate justification of is tactics and goals. In the end, all V wants is the current government out of power, with nary a stray thought for the aftermath. Once he gets everyone marching to his beat (indeed, he even gets them all wearing his mask!), he's accomplished all he set out to do.

V's gunpowder treason and plot revolves around the destruction of the Parliament building on November 5. Never mind that Parliament has stood for centuries, not as a symbol of autocratic abuse, but as a symbol of the power of democracy to change over time in response to the needs of the country. If Vendetta is taken seriously as a political comment on American society, it boils down to an "Anybody but Bush" bumper sticker arriving a little late on the heels of history.

The problem is that the film isn't even sure about its point. Clearly, it calls for revolution, but not in the name of any clear idea. It just wants blood. The thematic incoherence and jackleg direction demand anything but serious cerebral consideration: they demand that the film be taken as another in a long line of pseudo-intellectual, sci-fi action thrillers that depend on quasi-philosophical shorthand to trick the audience into thinking the film has something to say.

As an action thriller, McTeigue is competent in staging the first two major sequences, then throws the whole thing in the shitter with his "knife-time" climax, in which V's gleaming blades trail gray computer-animated comet dust as he slices, dices, and chop-socks a platoon of soldiers for no apparent reason (since he'd already achieved his sophomoric endgame). Between these sequences, interminable stretches of obvious social commentary and cliché character development fill screen time, with several scenes that, on their own, might even be considered strong, but stitched together as they are, are blotches in a variegated, flimsy quilt.

If appealing to the base glee the adolescent-minded take in seeing stuff blow up real good is the ultimate goal of V for Vendetta, it fails. If appealing to the self-righteous anger of the progressive armchair philosophers is the ultimate goal of V for Vendetta, it fails. In striking a balance between those two goals, V for Vendetta fails. The worst thing for a tentpole blockbuster or political allegory to do is achieve complete irrelevance, and that's precisely what V for Vendetta did. The act of pushing back the release date, in retrospect, is symbolic of the subconscious lack of confidence the makers of a symbolic film had in their product to contribute anything but a gaseous burp to the political firestorm that has been brewing for well over three years. It can't be taken seriously on any level, a shrug of the collective shoulders that amounts to the revelry of children burning a mask just because it's fun, a spit in the eye to everything Fawkes thought he stood for.

God save the Queen.

[Pozer]

Here's my review, if anyone's interested...

Woa woa woa... I'm here to waste my time, but not that much time.

[Split Infinitive]

Here's my review, if anyone's interested...

Woa woa woa... I'm here to waste my time, but not that much time.

You see, that review is central to the plot of my new play, Six Posters in Search of an Editor.

[polkablues]

Here's my review, if anyone's interested...

Woa woa woa... I'm here to waste my time, but not that much time.

You see, that review is central to the plot of my new play, Six Posters in Search of an Editor.

I'll give it a shot...

V for Vendetta (2006)

...the... film... is... Not quite... competent.  God save the Queen.

[squints]

from imdb:

V For Vendetta creator Alan Moore is desperate to be disassociated from the screen adaptation of his classic comic strip - and is begging the producers not to credit him for his work. The cartoonist, who also conceived From Hell and The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, hates seeing his work diluted by movie-makers, and refuses to put his name to the result. He says, "I want them to say, 'We're not going to give you any money for your work, you're not going to get any credit for it and we're not going to put your name on it.' To see a line of dialogue or a character that I have poured that much emotional involvement into, to see them casually travestied and watered down and distorted... it's kind of painful. It's much better just to avoid them altogether."

Ouch!
i'm kinda glad i skipped this. i'll definitely rent it though

[Split Infinitive]

I'll give it a shot...

V for Vendetta (2006)

...the... film... is... Not quite... competent.  God save the Queen.

Yes, thank you.  That's what I meant to say, only I couldn't find the words.