James McTeigue handles violent action with confidence. We are less persuaded by his storytelling: in V for Vendetta, forceful confrontations give way to explanations that stop the film, despite Hugo Weaving’s persuasive performance.
Fi1m perspective
In V for Vendetta (2006), the masked avenger has a persuasive voice, and the film gives him plenty of time to use it. James McTeigue handles the physical confrontations with confidence, but the speeches repeatedly interrupt their momentum. We grew impatient with those explanations because they made the film feel longer without making it clearer. Hugo Weaving gives us a reason to stay, though a thriller should not need its leading performance to supply quite so much of its energy.
McTeigue came to his feature debut after working as first assistant director on Dark City (1998) and the Matrix trilogy (1999–2003). That experience helps explain his assurance with set pieces, the part of V for Vendetta in which we most readily see his skill. The Wachowskis wrote and produced the film, and returned as producers for his next feature, the martial-arts film Ninja Assassin (2009).
Yet the debut also shows how much remains to be done between confrontations. Martin Walsh’s editing repeatedly has to stop for another stretch of exposition, while Dario Marianelli’s music pushes for excitement that the scenes themselves cannot always supply. Weaving’s delivery makes the talk bearable more often than it makes it rewarding. The film runs for 132 minutes, and its recurring explanations give us ample time to notice how much urgency drains away when the action stops.
McTeigue subsequently directed the period thriller The Raven (2012), followed by Survivor (2015) and Breaking In (2018). Television took him back to the Wachowskis’ work through episodes of Sense8 (2015–2017); he also directed episodes of Messiah (2020). The criticism of The Raven as handsome but short on dramatic life suggests that the weakness was not confined to his debut. We would welcome a McTeigue thriller that got through an explanation with the briskness of a fight.
Biography
James McTeigue is an Australian film and television director. Born on 29 December 1967 in Sydney, New South Wales, he began working in the film industry in the late 1980s as a production assistant on Australian films before becoming an assistant director.
He served as assistant director on films including Dark City (1998), the Matrix trilogy (1999–2003) and Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (2002). McTeigue made his feature directorial debut with V for Vendetta (2005), written and produced by the Wachowskis. He has since directed Ninja Assassin (2009), The Raven (2012), Survivor (2015) and episodes of Sense8 (2015–2017), and produced The Matrix Resurrections (2021).
