Review: V for Vendetta

2020. Britain is a Totalitarian state run by dictatorial Chancellor Sutler (John Hurt), and much of the rest of the world has crumbled. Media is censored, all forms of art, literature, culture, and even the Koran are banned. A young woman named Evey (Natalie Portman) is saved from some sleazy secret police officers by a strange vigilante in a Guy Fawkes mask and Zorro-like hat, named V (Hugo Weaving). Evie, a gopher at the government’s propaganda TV network later saves V’s life. She eventually finds herself caught up in his cause, initially unwittingly but eventually more committed. You see V, a mixture of Guy Fawkes, “The Count of Monte Cristo” and an anarchic terrorist, has been carrying out explosive activities on various London monuments all a part of his eventual plan to overthrow the Chancellor’s oppressive government. It’s also all tied to an incident from V’s past that only slowly reveals itself. Tim Pigott-Smith plays the Chancellor’s vile right-hand man, Stephen Fry plays Evey’s subversive TV host employer, Roger Allam is the venom-spewing propagandist TV pundit Lewis Prothero, who is on V’s shit list. Stephen Rea and Rupert Graves play a couple of coppers investigating V’s vigilante/extremist activities.

It’s strange that this 2005 graphic novel adaptation from director James McTeigue (“Ninja Assassin”, “Survivor”) and screenwriters The Wachowskis (the filmmakers behind “Bound” and “The Matrix”) didn’t leave enough of an impression on me the first time around to really remember it coming into my second viewing of it. It was quite hyped at the time, but you don’t hear much about it at all these days. I say it’s strange that I don’t have strong recollections of my first viewing, because it’s actually a bloody good movie. Yes, it’s obvious that Mr. McTeigue is having his directorial strings pulled by the Wachowskis, but outside of the “Matrix”-style action scenes, this is a vastly different movie and a strong one in its own right. No matter who is to be credited for it, it sure is slick as hell to look at and the cinematography by the late Adrian Biddle (“Aliens”, “An American Haunting”) is stunning. Although the on-screen credit goes to illustrator David Lloyd, the graphic novel actually comes from Alan Moore (and DC Comics, a detail which I had forgotten), who being pissed off with previous adaptations of his work just wasn’t having it anymore and decided to give credit to Lloyd instead. Then he complained that the film changed the graphic novel’s themes. ‘Coz, of course he did. None of that matters to me, all I care about is whether it’s any good or not, and it certainly is.

There’s a bunch of influences at play here, without ever seeming like a rip-off of anything. Moore might complain about the film using Britain somewhat in-name only and changing the politics to a more Americanised parable, but I found it fascinating (And since Thatcher-ism was no longer relevant at the time, you can understand why a more Americanised Bush-era worldview has been chosen, weird as it is to apply that to Great Britain perhaps). The casting of John Hurt as the clearly totalitarian Chancellor is masterful, given this is a very Orwellian worldview and Hurt played the protagonist in the film version of Orwell’s “1984”. So seeing his noggin on a giant screen will mean a lot to some people who get it. Hurt’s terrific, playing the role for all it’s worth. Pretty much everyone’s on song here, particularly an impressive Hugo Weaving (working mostly with his deep voice, really), with excellent back-up by a typically weary-looking Stephen Rea, a well-cast Stephen Fry, and one of Natalie Portman’s best adult performances to date. She even does a pretty good job with an English accent.

When you take away all the political, Orwellian stuff and the obvious nods to “The Phantom of the Opera”, what you have here is a masked vigilante movie, or a superhero flick. What I love about the film is that in a way, it’s what superheroes would likely really be like in the real world: Somewhat unhinged murderers with their own sense of morality. The underrated “Watchmen” got that down pat, too. So I really dug how ruthless and vengeful V is. This is basically the superhero free of his shackles of restraint and operating on merely his own personal sense of morality/vengeance. Amazingly, for a film where the superhero-of-sorts is a survivor of basically a British version of the Holocaust, it doesn’t end up being in poor taste or unpleasant to watch. I don’t normally like the real world mingling with comic book/superhero stuff, but this isn’t like “Iron Man” where real world geopolitics got in the way of superhero fun. Like “Watchmen”, this is heightened enough to work as very slick entertainment and escapism (without being brainless in the slightest, either).

Fascinating as a comic book/superhero flick from a different, darker angle than many without losing sight of entertainment. Well-acted, slick-looking, and its only crime is that of predictability of plot. Still, this one might just be getting better with age.

Rating: B