Not too bad, but not great.

Rating: 6/10 (16 April 2006)

One of the problems that I had with this movie is that I went into the theater with high expectations. It's really tough for action movies to live up to their hype these days, when stunning effects are the norm.
In my school of thought, there are two ways to make a killer action movie: if the director has a great script, then they must never sacrifice it to deliver on the action. If the director doesn't have a great script, then they should go all-out to give the viewer non-stop action. This movie had a mediocre script and wasn't paced very well, so it didn't deliver on either of those two formulas. As with many comic-book (graphic novel) adaptations, the original material didn't translate easily into a screenplay. The end result was that the time between action sequences left much to be desired, which produced many awkward lulls. If the script had been a little tighter, no problem.
In V, the directors took too much time away from the action to bash the viewer over the head with the underlying message of the film. That message is: nations who surrender the freedom to dissent are but a few steps away from totalitarianism. Nice message, but give us a little credit. We can catch on to the similarities between the directors' dystopia and the current state of things without all the patronizing news montages thrown in to make sure we get it.
That said, I didn't leave the movie frustrated that I had just wasted $9, which is how I feel many times after watching big-budget action films. This movie was a great way to spend a Friday night, but it's not a film that will linger in my memory years from now as a great flick.