Here is a list of great things to do with $7 besides see “V for Vendetta”:
1. Buy an Egyptian bed comforter
2. Support the American Negro College Fund
3. Open an active checking account at the bank in Wal-Mart
Incidentally, these were all things I considered doing before I was scammed out of my last seven bucks by misleading movie trailers and bogus reviews. Don’t get me wrong; “V for Vendetta” is a great movie if you enjoy unrealistic action and support things such as terrorism, plot holes and films that make you say “Wuh?”
Set in London, “V for Vendetta” predicts a dreary future in which our worst fears are confirmed: America has crumbled under its own greed and has become exiled by the world’s superpowers. Propaganda is perpetrated as news, and the government has been given the authority to regulate almost everything. Actually, this isn’t that far from fiction. Come to think of it, this movie could have been set in December.
Our hero is known simply as V, a flamboyant metrosexual who would almost be respectable if he did not paint his face like a male Geisha. The man with the mysterious past has a thing for black clothing, home made bombs and English literature. My guess is he is a teenager from the Midwest. V opposes the current state of affairs and is convinced that the only way to save his beloved country from its tyrannical leader is to blow everything to smithereens. T for terrorist.
Armed with an unacceptable English accent and his mother’s finest kitchen knives, V goes all “Taliban” on his government and pulls a major Bin Laden alongside his female co-star, the always-gorgeous Natalie Portman. On paper, this sounds like it should have been a fantastic film and it could have been; but rather than developing a story, the film delves into several sequences of flashbacks and political banter that made me want to pull a Bin Laden on the director.
But I’m not like that. So I ate my popcorn like a good American and prayed the movie got better. And guess what? It never did.
And then I fell asleep for about 45 minutes. I’m not kidding. S for sleepy.
Which is why you should not consider this a movie review. In movie reviews, the critics analyze a film scene by scene and highlight its hits and misses. I fell asleep for almost an hour so I cannot do this.
In all fairness, it is quite possible that I slept through the most important part of the film. The part where everything was explained the point in which the movie became good and the scene that gave the entire film credibility. Maybe, maybe not. All I remember is that when I woke up, Natalie Portman was bald and there were about eight less people in the theater. R for refund.
I never spoil movies, so I will not tell you how this one ends. But I will tell you how it should have ended. Heath Ledger should have rode in on a horse and shot V in the knee, then slapped the sunshine out of Natalie Portman for making this movie, then Wesley Snipes should have triple back-flipped off of a building and given Ledger a high-five and said, “Know where a brother can find a good mountain around here?”
–Jamaal Bachelor