V FOR VENDETTA (2005)

 

DIRECTED by James McTeigue

SCREENPLAY by the Wachowski Brothers based on the graphic novel "V for Vendetta" by Alan Moore & David Lloyd.

STARRING - Natalie Portman as Evie, Hugo Weaving as V,  Stephen Rea as Finch,  John Hurt as Adam Sutler,  Stephen Fry as Dietrich, Tim Piggot-Smith as Creedy,  Rupert Graves as Dominic Stone.

PLOT - Britain. The near future.

The UK has fallen under the dystopian regime of Adam Sutler and his fascist political party. The streets are under curfew.

Citizens are monitored by the Minute Men - Sutler's undercover secret police.

All dissent is ground underfoot. Anyone who speaks out against Sutler and the party are imprisoned and put to death - some are even experimented on...

But - out there, in the shadowy streets of London there is a man. A man who was a product of one of those experiments. A man who escaped and now wants to bring down the system that oppressed him and others like him.

He is known only as V. This is going to one November the 5th that everyone remembers...

PERFORMANCES - The makers of this film employed a top notch cast to bring Alan Moore's graphic novel to life.

The role of V - the Guy Fawkes masked vigilante - is played by Hugo Weaving and he's great in the role. V is a man who was once captured and experimented upon (it's implied but never fully confirmed that the experiment gave him super human abilities) - he's hideously scarred so hides his face under the iconic mask. He's basically the Phantom of the Opera meets Batman - he has an underground lair that serves as his home, full of purloined art and literature that he's keeping safe from the fascist state (oh, and it's also chock full of weaponry too).

V is shown to be both sensitive and caring and also horribly manipulative. He's brave and noble - a gentleman vigilante - but he's also violent and pragmatic. He's an incredibly complex character - anyone thinking that this is just another superhero movie had better think again - it's a lot more complex and nuanced than that.

Where this duality of V's character most obviously comes into play is with his relationship with Evie (Natalie Portman) - a young girl that he saves from the Minute Men when she accidentally breaks curfew one night. A friendship grows between the two - one that even verges on romantic at points. We see V caring for her (he gets quite cosily domestic at points, fussing round her like an old mother hen), we see them watching movies together, we see V become first a saviour, then a friend and finally a mentor to her as he grooms her to be his successor.

BUT at one point, V (who is also a master of disguise) captures Evie and puts her through a simulation of a government internment centre. He puts her through Hell - he completely and utterly BREAKS her, all so that she can understand what he himself went through and so that she too can finally feel his revolutionary fire. It's horrible what he does to her and yet, like Evie herself, this doesn't cause you to be repulsed by V's actions - instead you empathize with him even more. Very, VERY well done.

Portman is also very good as Evie, she's simply stunning in the scenes where she's in the fake interment camp. She totally nails just how broken and hopeless Evie becomes in this situation. 

My only criticism with her is the accent she chooses to portray Evie. Portman is an American playing a British character and for some reason has her speaking in "received pronunciation/Queen's English", this just sits wrong with me - Evie's supposed to be a member of the repressed working class, NOT a member of the Royal family. She sounds way too posh, ideally she should have played the character with an EastEnd accent or at least with an Estuary lilt to her voice, basically ANY type of traditional London working class accent would have been more believable. It's not a huge point, but it did take me out of the character a little at times, which is a shame because otherwise she's pretty damn good in the part.

Honourable mentions also must go to Stephen Rea playing Finch, he's a police inspector who is charged with tracking down V. As the story progresses Finch begins to see the corruption around him and in turn also comes to understand V's motives. With his hangdog looks, Rea brings a weariness to the role of Finch which makes his awakening at the film's end believable and inspiring.

John Hurt plays the role of Fascist dictator Adam Sutler. Hurt is great in everything and this film is no exception.

Sutler is a steely cold and menacing presence throughout the film, issuing terse commands to his underlings via his Big Brother style screen. He's a dictator who long ago gave up even pretending to be benevolent. Now he just rules with a grip of fear.

As V's activities step up a gear we see Sutler become increasingly rattled. That cold calculating veneer starts to give way to desperate panic. By the film's end he's a broken man - betrayed by his followers and about to be murdered by V. A very satisfying performance from Hurt.

SFX - Some pretty impressive explosions - particularly when V blows up the Old Bailey at the film's start and his final victory where he succeeds in doing what his inspiration - Guy Fawkes - failed to do and blows up the Houses of Parliament.

VIOLENCE - Make no mistake - V is a stone cold killer. We see him take down seemingly endless swathes of hapless Minute Men and Police officers in some excellently choreographed fight sequences.

Whether it's by hand...

Or sword...

Or dagger. It never ends well for V's enemies.

V is fatally shot at the film's close but not before he's instilled his legacy in Evie who honours his memory by igniting the bombs that destroy Parliament.

RATING - This is a great film - dark, action packed and thought provoking in equal measure. For some reason Alan Moore HATED it and demanded that his name be taken off it, but then this does seem to be a bit of a thing for Moore as he routinely asks to be dissociated from film adaptations of his comics work. I don't really get this attitude (I bet he doesn't complain about the pay cheques when they come through) but who am I to argue ? 

Personally I think the film makers did a good job with this adaptation - in fact it's probably one of the closest comic book to screen adaptations that I've seen and has ended up becoming every bit as iconic as the graphic novel that inspired it.

The big thing about this film (and the main reason I chose to review it at this time - aside from the obvious Bonfire night/ Guy Fawkes association) is just how prescient this film is.

At the time of writing, Great Britain is under the control of a leader that is dangerously close to becoming a dictator. Like Adam Sutler, Kier Starmer was democratically elected but is well down the road to subjugating the public. Starmer is trying to implement a digital ID scheme where the government will be able to monitor EVERYTHING that the people do, they'll even be able to cut off access to your own money if they see you to be problematic. It doesn't take a genius to see where this could lead...

Our free speech is being censored - Police are kicking down people's doors in the middle of the night for the heinous crime of using "hurtful language". 

Civil unrest is rife.

Starmer is the most hated prime minister in British history (and considering we had to stomach Maggie Thatcher in the 80's that's quite an achievement in itself).

That's why now, more than ever, we NEED characters and movies like this - to remind us that hope isn't lost, that all it takes is enough people standing up and saying "NO", that dictators NEVER win - no matter how hopeless it may first appear.

As V himself says at one point - "People shouldn't be afraid of their government, a government should be afraid of it's people".

5 stars - an important movie that transcends the roots of it's genre.

 

Where are you V ? We need you...

ART -

Also - be sure to give the original graphic novel a read - Alan Moore is a genius and the graphic novel is an important piece of LITERATURE in its own right (note, I didn't describe it as a "comic" because it IS literature). Below is the original cover and some artwork.