| | This is an overall well-written review (I have not seen the movie, just am juding the merits of your writing), but I'm a big put-off as a reader that you haven't read the graphic novel.
To judge the merits of a film that is adapted from acclaimed source material, I'd like to read a reviewer discuss how faithful it is to the original. One can't properly understand the impact of the film without seeing how its release will effect earlier incarnations.
There are exceptions. I don't expect every reviewer of "Brokeback Mountain" to have read the short story, but given that "V for Vendetta" had buzz surrounding it when Alan Moore disavowed any association, and given that it's an acclaimed graphic novel, the review is incomplete without noting how it adapts the source material for a new era/new medium.
Other than that, good discussion of the film. |
| | It never fails to amaze me how some half-assed critic can be given a forum for his own ineptitude and then proceed to show everyone his level of arrogance on top of it. Foote has accomplished just that in his March 2006 commentary of "V For Vendetta".
Like Foote, I too never read the original piece, but then, I am only commenting on the movie as a successful conveyance of a theme, whether or not it was accurate in recreating that set forth in the original novel.
To that end, the movie very efficiently portayed the complex relationship between destroyer and creator, i.e. V and Evey. This is evident throughout the movie particularly in the near-end scene where V momentarily contemplates the potential for a relationship with Evey, but struggles for a moment saying, "I can't". He couldn't, because V's very existance was due solely to the presence of the evil, corruption, and injustice that had created him, and his very existance marked the presence of those facets in both that, and our current, cultures. Upon the fulfillment of his mission, the reason for his existance would cease to exist. That is why he had to be on the train as it passed under the Parliament during its destruction; that was the point where his function would cease to exist and where he had to pass the torch to the creator, Evey, to finish what he, V, had been created for.
Even the symbolism of the Parliament building was such a perfect choice. Its massive and complex structure, built over nearly a millenium, further exemplified what has happened to ideals as they become "fixed" into buildings and plaques, leaving the population it claimed to represent behind in its wake of betrayal.
I love the work of the Warchowski brothers, and "V For Vendetta" is as good as it gets. Another masterpiece. Spend some time with this movie for, just as in the Matrix Trilogy, you'll be picking up pieces of it on subsequent viewings that you missed on the first.
Foote attempts to blow this movie off as something akin to "Smoky and the Bandit", which actually seems to be a theme he might better be able to handle. Had he spent as much time focusing on the movie's merits as he did in line waiting for some gummy bears, he might have gotten something out of this piece.
I give the movie a 9+, out of 10. The critic gets a 3. That's only because he shows some degree of intellect, even though there's nothing worse than having to read the drivel of someone filled with self import trying to pass themself off as a bona fide critic.
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