The vendetta is against the audience

Rating: 2/10 (20 March 2006)

..and you might wonder what you did to deserve it if you're forced to sit through this imbecilic, pretentious candy floss. If Brazil and Nineteen Eighty-Four are the perfect fusion of botanicals and base spirit in bleak totalitarian terms then V for Vendetta is the tasteless engine lubricant that passes for gin, served in Victory Square. Ripped from the soiled pages of Alan Moore's 1989 Anti-Thatcherite fantasy, it envisions a Britain (though in the movie this is freely interchangeable with England betraying the ignorance of the screenwriters) that's been taken over by a tyrannical despotic government. All freedoms are curtailed, though sadly not the freedom to talk in long-winded sentences but we'll come back to that. 'V' is a terrorist who plans to change all this by dressing as Guy Fawkes, that other, er, champion of the oppressed masses, - hatching a plan to destroy Parliament, by now a symbol of repression and intolerance thus liberating the populous  Guido redux if you like while John Hurt, inverting his Winston Smith role, grimaces and gesticulates as the Stalinesque Chancellor who V plans to permanently deselect. I've not read the graphic novel and this is something I share with the filmmakers if the result is anything to go by. In fact so muddled are the politics, so flat the direction and so poor the performances that it feels from start to finish like the filmic equivalent of a dirty protest. Vendetta's conception is a washout in every respect. The poorly structured, badly written screenplay by the Warchowski Brothers is primarily to blame. Why are these people given so much latitude? Didn't anyone see the Matrix sequels? The brothers grim commit their own act of cine-terrorism by creating a sort of England USA where the English speak a sort of Californian-cockney. Listening to it recalls the scene from Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home is which Kirk suggests that they try to communicate with the space probe mimicking whale song. Spock points out that this would be pointless as you'd be copying the sounds not the language resulting in "gibberish"  its as if all the dialogue in this film has been channelled through the same translation software. The brothers know some English colloquialisms but have no idea how they are naturally used in real speech. American audiences won't care of course but for the real English it will be an effort not to laugh your way through the whole thing  it'll be all you can do to stay awake. This is like grit in the eyes but sadly, it's not the worst of it. The dire-logue aside it's the total poverty of ideas that really gets to you as it drags on..and on. The government of the future has been so successful in crushing the will of the people that's it turned all Londoners into clichés who helpfully sit on their sofas and watch the telescreen all day, lapping up V's simplistic messages of dissent or alternatively they're the proles, drinking in dank pubs  looking downtrodden and fixated on drink. Yes indeed, this is very much British life as I'd imagine it to be were I from Illonois. The screenplay is incredibly wordy  very long speeches, exposition follows exposition. Those hoping for some action to liven up the proceedings or break up the dull patches will feel their heart sink into their stomach long before it crawls to its plodding climax. The worst points? There are so many but V's demented Dandy routine accounts for most  Natalie Portman sounds like a New Zealander who ever so often remembers to enunciate an English vowel (badly)  the scene in which she dresses as a school girl so tow curlingly embarrassing as to make her work on Star Wars look Oscar winning by comparison.Hugo Weaving is wasting his time as the man behind the mask as he could be played by anyone  in fact Eryol Flynn's corpse could have matched this level of performance and for Steven Fry, an intelligent man so we're told, this should be a deeply depressing episode. I'm sure the idea of playing a repressed gay man who appreciates classic literature but can't openly say so must have been a lure but my goodness, it's the febrile complex on the film's pallid, diseased face. In bonfire night terms, V for Vendetta is like a knocked off firework in an expensive looking box  once lit it doesn't go off for 2 hours and when you go to check it, the thing blows up in your face scarring you for life. One mark for the use of the Julie London song (very droll) and one mark for those dominoes but that aside this is a hideous waste of effort. The rack, noose and knife for all concerned please.