Very entertaining and controversial, but at times blunt and meandering

Rating: 7/10 (19 March 2006)

Let me start off, first of all, by saying that, on the whole, I enjoyed this film. It was unusual, it was firmly rooted in its dark comic-book origins. It made me think, debate, and had explosions! What more could you want? Weaving, in his harlequinesque Fawkes mask makes for an exciting and theatrical antihero whose dark motives we are constantly led to question. Natalie Portman's acting is actually rather good. Surprisingly, Weaving and Portman both execute a convincing English accent. This is no mean feat for either.
The choice of Weaving for the role of 'V' at first baffled me. I concluded that the choice was entirely in reference to his part in 'The Matrix' as Agent Smith ("It's the smelllllll.... I feel.... Saturated.... by it'). Weaving has clearly been chosen almost entirely for his fascinating voice; moribund and growly when put on in a slow manner. This is an important point since we never see his character's face, and his character relies to no small degree on the timbre of his words. And Weaving was the only actor I could think of whose English accent would carry with it no past associations and prejudices from other films.
John Hurt, on the other hand, seems to have been chosen entirely for his associations with '1984', and its depiction of a similar totalitarian Britain. This seems a little unsubtle. Close-up shots of his face and unmistakably bad lower teeth, however, convey the desired effect of a bastard uber-monarch, but this is hardly Hurt's finest hour.
There are many themes; freedom-of-speech questions, the topics of governmental oppression, the us-vs-them statements and the quandaries over what makes a terrorist a 'terrorist' as opposed to a freedom-fighter. Amongst these decent and engaging themes, though, there are a few problems with this as a film. Firstly, I question the taste of having a virtuous terrorist blow up the houses of parliament, when people in England are terrified that such an event might actually be plausible. Secondly, the film drags on a bit in the middle. To me as an English viewer, some of the scenes between the two midlands police officers in the police station played out like an ITV drama (amongst all the high-budget explosions). The English love to see high-budget, Hollywood explosions occurring on their poor, insignificant soil; as in Mission Impossible One. So why not stick a couple more big bangs in the middle to keep up the pace and keep us poor, buck-toothed Limeys happy?
And this brings up another, less subtle point. Once we have acknowledged that this film is good specifically for its moral ambiguity, it is, at time, rather blunt. At points I felt like I was being bludgeoned over the head with some of its moral and political opinions. I'm a liberal, and yet even I found its tone a little too evidently the creation of left-wing writers at times. This is perhaps the cause of the raft of rather strange right-wing comments that have come out about this film 'glorifying terrorism'. One chap (a holocaust denier, as it turns out), thought it was perfectly emblematic that Stephen Fry kept a copy of the Qu'ran in his cellar alongside his gay porn. Both artefacts are, apparently, evidence of his degeneracy.
On the whole, a good film. 'V for Vendetta' is an engaging and thought-provoking ,politically topical comic book adventure, and in this vein lacks subtly in its opinions. It would have been a near-perfect film however, had the creators balanced its intelligent execution with a little low-brow action to keep us a little more entertained.