It's been awhile since we've had a truly critically divisive movie, and V for Vendetta is shaping up to be it. As David Poland writes in The Hot Blog, the next week or so promises to be an interesting ride for this film, with reviewers already declaring their opinions as "facts" as they try to dampen down expectations and excitement. Beware of professions of boredom when the subject and execution are this controversial.
I anticipated that my Upper West Side neighbor David Denby--such a trial for him, bumping into me wherever he goes--would render a negative verdict on V for Vendetta, and so he does, rapping his gavel with stern monotonony as he pronounces sentence. With this review and his pan of Why We Fight, I fear David is drifting toward neoconservatism, a doctrine more congenial to the sort of principled stands he likes to take, offering more room for rhetorical heroism. I pray I am wrong.
