Ok, before I start, you all should know where I stand. I really like the original version of V for Vendetta. In fact after watching it the first time I felt the comic paled in comparison to the film. The comic was full of naive political rhetoric, is now dated, and was made over the period of several years during which time the tone and direction of the story changed.
ANYWAY, Nick Mollo's edit:
I watched the NTSC Xvid version, so my A/V technical complaints may not apply to the full DVD release.
The stereo audio was flat. Even with Prologic decoding the rear channels were too soft to even be evident.
The video was converted to NTSC by dropping 1 frame in 5 making the picture jittery and hard on the eyes.
I noticed one or two dirty cuts which may have been a function of reencoding instead of direct stream copy by the editing software. In the most notable instance, after the cut the picture was sharp, blurred and then sharpened again.
The edit itself:
The opening montage and music. Yuck. First it's waaaaaay too long, I thought we'd never get to the main story. The song and montage could have been cut to 30 seconds instead we suffer through 3 minutes and 30 seconds of it.
The music itself was mixed too loud compared to the rest of the film's audio and don't get me started on the choice of song.
This might almost have been acceptable if opening credits were running, but this is not the case.
Then the continuity errors stared.
I thought it was extremely nice of V to show Evey a beautiful firework display, club her over the head, drag her limp body to the Shadow Gallery, strip her while unconscious, wash her, change her clothes, and apply more conservative makeup.
If V knocked out and then carried an unconscious Evey away, wouldn't the surveillance cameras have picked that up? I guess not since she was still called an accomplice.
As in the original cut, the existence of V is kept a secret from the public and the destruction of the Old Bailey was called an 'emergency demolition'.
We then almost immediately see prerecorded video footage of Lewis Prothero on TV denouncing V, who a) is suppose to be a secret from the public, and b) hasn't made his alias known to ANYONE except Evey.
Prothero goes on in his rant about the accomplice Evey, even though the police JUST figured out her name... DURING the broadcast.
This was more than I could stand and turned it off after only 20 minutes.
I think this edit should be UNapproved and sent back to the drawing board.
Good idea, poor execution. 2 stars. (It would have been 1 but there was no zero star rating.)
