30-Second Movie Review
Mar. 21st, 2006 10:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
missroseroseWent to see V for Vendetta as a kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing with Brian and Monica. I'd heard it was decent, but I've been incredibly disillusioned with the whole experience of "the movies" lately - which is probably directly related to both the fact that theatres have been charging more and more for less and less (in terms of quality of experience) and the fact that mainstream movies have, quite frankly, pretty much sucked lately. Ironically enough, it was this movie that made me realize how true this was - Monica made some comment about how this was the best movie she'd seen all year, and (a couple of blinks later) I realized that, while far from perfect, this probably *is* the best movie I've seen in quite some time.
The inevitable political points and comparisons to source material have already been made numerous times, and I don't have a whole lot to offer on the latter anyway, not having read the graphic novel (though I may well track it down when I have a chance). However, since a movie is, at its very core, always a story, it follows that any movie will only be as good as its storytelling - and this is where V for Vendetta really shines. Even though it's a decent chunk over two hours long, it rarely feels boring or forced - in fact, it's actually pretty enthralling. Given that it's a comic-book movie, I'd expected to be interested in some parts and bored for some or most of it, but I was rather pleasantly surprised at how intelligently written it was.
I'd argue that the major achievement, story-wise, was the way it balanced plot and character. The plot is interesting, true, but instead of being all-consuming to the story (as so often happens in action films) it serves to develop and explain the characters. You started out wondering what was going on, but ended up more interested in why it was happening; why the characters were acting the way they were - and the movie answers these questions without coming across as heavy-handed and only rarely falling into cliché. Given how oft-used much of this material has been in the past (lone rebel against totalitarian government, political conspiracy, beauty-and-the-beast dynamic, etc.), this is really quite an accomplishment. Granted, there are a couple of moments that gave me the shoe-shuffling feeling of "this has been done before", but these are pretty few and far between. Add in some really nifty camera work and some awesome explosions (and seriously, has anyone ever known me to describe movie explosions as "awesome"? But these are), and you've got a pretty good two hours' entertainment, that hopefully has enough to it to provoke some thought afterwards.
The inevitable political points and comparisons to source material have already been made numerous times, and I don't have a whole lot to offer on the latter anyway, not having read the graphic novel (though I may well track it down when I have a chance). However, since a movie is, at its very core, always a story, it follows that any movie will only be as good as its storytelling - and this is where V for Vendetta really shines. Even though it's a decent chunk over two hours long, it rarely feels boring or forced - in fact, it's actually pretty enthralling. Given that it's a comic-book movie, I'd expected to be interested in some parts and bored for some or most of it, but I was rather pleasantly surprised at how intelligently written it was.
I'd argue that the major achievement, story-wise, was the way it balanced plot and character. The plot is interesting, true, but instead of being all-consuming to the story (as so often happens in action films) it serves to develop and explain the characters. You started out wondering what was going on, but ended up more interested in why it was happening; why the characters were acting the way they were - and the movie answers these questions without coming across as heavy-handed and only rarely falling into cliché. Given how oft-used much of this material has been in the past (lone rebel against totalitarian government, political conspiracy, beauty-and-the-beast dynamic, etc.), this is really quite an accomplishment. Granted, there are a couple of moments that gave me the shoe-shuffling feeling of "this has been done before", but these are pretty few and far between. Add in some really nifty camera work and some awesome explosions (and seriously, has anyone ever known me to describe movie explosions as "awesome"? But these are), and you've got a pretty good two hours' entertainment, that hopefully has enough to it to provoke some thought afterwards.
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