V for Vendetta

We watch this every year on November 5th as real life gets closer and closer to this dystopian depiction each year.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

V for Vendetta has plenty of interesting ideas but they're all too often lost in a movie that feels a little disorganised.

While the acting is solid, the introduction of the letter/narrative of two sexual minorities losing their lives which does not add anything to the plot, combined with the antirreligious propaganda, turn this movie into a political pamphlet. The twentieth century alone has shed more blood than all the 19 centuries before combined, the greatest butchers in the history of mankind being atheists (Stalin, Mao). So, while I acknowledge that evil knows no boundaries (whether christian, atheist, jewish, muslim, or whatever) throwing a punch to religious faith insinuating it is an instrument for dictatorship calls for an accusatory counterblow: remove the plank from your eyes and look at China and Cuba.

Just an overall bad movie. The plot, acting, pacing, which is amazing it’s so bad because it has two solid actors as the leads, but from V’s first dialogue, I was already groaning and rolling my eyes. V is the definition of “internet loser that wears a fedora”. I don’t have anything against the idea of “evil government that needs violent opposition to change”, but the movie completely ignores that V is still 100% an actual terrorist and that history has shown, with basically one exception(the American revolution), that violent change of government just leads to the same exact problem, but on the other side of the spectrum. A lot of people seem to miss the greater theme that both ultra right/left governments are bad, whether it’s the **** the movie portrays) or the USSR(and any other communist country, such as China). So while not a bad theme, the movie gets too caught up in right vs left, when it should really be “the government needs to be kept in check by the people”. There’s a lot of weak plot points, that leaves me scratching my head wondering “this doesn’t really add up, but whatever, let’s see if it makes sense later” rarely does. There’s some “humor”, it misses the punch in my opinion. The fighting is very poor too, you can’t recreate what they do, because every hand movement is just a cut to another angle. The funny thing is the movie has an anti-gun commentary, because the bad guys use guns and they comment on how guns are oppressive(plus the movie added this weird American-centric political theatre that’s missing in the comics) but the civilians allowed the government to get this by not having guns, so are they bad or what? There’s a dominos sequence, I thought that was pretty cool looking though. Don’t watch this movie if you value your time, it’s corny, cringey, and reeks of 14 year old boy edge.