OTHER 2006 TITLES Already Being Discussed

Gertie, I really think the major problem of this film was that it wasn't about making a good story. The makers wanted to get certain political messages out there. And they didn't manage to integrate it into a plot. Not to mention the cheap symbolisms. The political statement was far more important than the story itself, the result was a bad movie.

My impression was the story hadn't even been fully worked out, was not fully mellowed and perfected yet. I agree that this film says things that need to be said. The topic in itself is rather complicated. Like Stephen Fry put it: „One man‘s terrorist is the other man‘s freedom fighter.“ Now, I don‘t sympathise with Bu$h or neo-cons in any way. But I can‘t stand it when a film tells me what to think: what to think about the characters, what to think of the motives, what to think of the message and finally what to think of the film itself. And this film told me what to think ALL the time, thus gave the whole complexity away, sold it out.

You have the medium of film here and not a propaganda leaflet. But it came across like propaganda and certainly not as a differentiated and intelligent movie. There were political statements thrown around all the time, without any real back up within the plot. One smart statement here, another intelligent statement there. It was ridiculously clumsy.

What is most unforgivable is the oversimplification of the idea "freedom fighter vs. terrorist", which is a very complicated and tricky issue. Here, it was reduced to it's most one-sided, simplest form. Which in this case was not even a philosophy or idea: It was the sympathy with V: We like V, we understand his motives and hurray!

Maybe this it is misplaced to say this here, but it is one of the marks of fascism that there is one leader who embodies the destiny of the nation or group. Literally:
"- the need for authority either through born leaders (always masculine), that culminate into a national leader, who is the only one who is able to embody the fate of the group
- the superiority of the instincts of the leader over abstract and universal reason(ing)..."
Source: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400033918/sr=8-1/qid=11474 89184/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-5743214-1082436?%5Fencoding=UTF8
Pretty ironic, I would say.

What also sucked was the ending: Totalitarian regimes don't submit themselves to the resistance of their people. That's why they're totalitarian. I didn't see the reason why these people weren't shot: The logical consequence would have been that something like either Prague 1968 or Peking in July 1989 happens and / or chaos. Why should they all of a sudden come to their senses? The reason that the USSR and GDR (former East Germany) came to their senses was that they were broke and desperately on the drip from the west, especially East Germany from West Germany. So, where is the motivation?

Now, some people argue that it was all a sort of imagination, a fantasy thing and such. But if you argue like that then you make a mockery of all totalitarian regimes, since the soldiers and guards of the systems not only exist in the people's minds. That aside, if this was the major idea then it was executed without any logic. I am sorry, but I fail to see the logic behind it, provided there was any.

And Natalie Portman? I think Natalie Portman sucks. I consider her to be the most overrated actress of her generation. I am not just talking about her accent in "VfV" ( I heard at least three accents in that role: British, American and some Australian. And something tells me there were even more. You don‘t even need to be a native speaker to hear that: All her co-stars were British and you heard the differences. ). I think, she sucks as an actress. Just take her dialogues with V where she seemed out of character.

Then her movie „Closer“: Can anybody tell me what she got the Oscar nomination for? I understand that she was supposed to be a complicated character. But this was conveyed to me by the script and the story itself and certainly not by her acting.

I think Portman is another case of those Hollywood Lolitas whose careers reach their peaks with their debuts: She was great, brilliant in "Léon". From there it‘s has been a long way down.