Delivering an entertaining movie with a message is a tough proposition for a filmmaker. Time spent on the thematic content often comes at the expense of story, hobbles the narrative, and gives the film a preachy tone. Waver on the theme by focusing exclusively on action, and the movie rings hollow. And then there’s the minimum dosage of eye candy theatergoers such expect on a big screen. Light it up or blow it up, but I want fire and blood, damn it. So talented is a director who strikes a tight balance between story, theme and pyrotechnics.<\/p>\n
Largely, V for Vendetta succeeds. The film is a compelling story about a corrupt government who wrongs a man and woman in such a way that the audience roots for them; the theme is easy to swallow: government answers to the people, not the reverse; lots of buildings explode. Diggety.<\/p>\n
There are slow points. V, the hero, has a vocabulary and manner of speech that rivals an English professor cloistered in an Ivory tower. The chemistry between Natalie Portman and V is almost unsettling, because one never sees V’s eyes.<\/p>\n
Overall, an enjoyable ride.<\/p>\n
Verdict: Matinee or DVD purchase.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Delivering an entertaining movie with a message is a tough proposition for a filmmaker. Time spent on the thematic content often comes at the expense of story, hobbles the narrative, and gives the film a preachy tone. Waver on the theme by focusing exclusively on action, and the movie rings hollow. And then there’s the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10641\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}