UK reviewers have got it all wrong. Why?

Rating: 10/10 (5 April 2006)

I can't imagine why UK film critics are so dead set against the British public seeing this film. It's heavily symbolic, and uses Brechtian distanciation to prevent identification with central characters in an effort to foreground the political and social concerns of the text. This is generally a fine strategy. In addition, It uses montage in an effective and polemical way, reminiscent of soviet propagandist film-making. Beyond this, it uses typage (a method of class representation) in order to discuss issues of British class conspicuously absent from almost all British cinema. It even takes, as its central inspiration, the story of Guy Fawkes (via Moore). Many historians suspect that the gunpowder plot was an anti-catholic propaganda conspiracy forged by Cecil, whose descendent's are still key figures of the British ruling class even as I write.
Overall, the film attempts to foreground its ideas over it's characterisation, a method only normally found in art film and (therefore) avant-garde film. As such, the fact that it is also entertaining is a triumph.
What is more, It signifies aspects of Britishness, (and American-ness) that we could all be proud of if we chose to be - our capacity for resistance.
So here lies my central confusion. How can you criticise a film for lack of characterisation or 'narrative' when it is self-consciously engaged in objective formal strategies and not subjective identification based ones? Is it because critics feel that people can't appreciate these types of film-making practice? You'd think that if they were right, no-one would like the film at all, and their views would be vindicated.
But people really seem to enjoy it. SHOCK HORROR.
Maybe there's another reason. Maybe all the film critics in the U.K. spend most of their time sucking long-pig meat from the soiled pants of the conservative socio-political ruling elite of Britain.
Oh, sorry, now I can understand the disparity between the formal/material evidence and mainstream opinion makers. They're all worried about their jobs. Twats.