Thought provoking! - But I don't mean the plot or the dialogue

Rating: 2/10 (18 March 2006)

The most thought provoking thing about this film is reading the reviews.
The film itself was utter drivel. I had read the reviews before going and thought to myself, "I can't go wrong picking this one". It was supposed to have everything that I would want to see in a movie. What a mistake! The action is incidental and third rate. Anyone expecting Matrix type stuff should be sorely disappointed and yet some reviewers praise it.
The acting, with the exception of Weaving and Hurt, was risible. I would particularly single out Natalie Portman as lacking all credibility. It sounded like she had had classes in "how to speak and comport yourself whilst being tortured" whilst at her finishing school. And yet many reviewers praise it!
I have not read the graphic novel. I can believe that the characters and setting might work in that format but on film I would have thought that the portrayal of London and Londoners was part of some sort of B-movie comedy spoof - they seem to have been lifted largely from somewhere between 1950 and 1975 with the LCD TV's sticking out as an anachronistic error rather than being the near future (If you put a child in thick black NHS glasses now you would be reported to the social services for mental cruelty). The initial encounter with V is even worse, being clearly inspired by Jack the Ripper movies. The police station was from the 1970s. As for the dialogue, it is not the fact that they keep saying "bollocks" that is the problem, it is the way that they say it - It's like they asked the queen to do a rap record and say "muthafucka" - it has no conviction or credibility.
I haven't said much about the political message and that is because, despite the reviews, there isn't really much of a message there when you look closely, or at lest nothing worthy of serious reflection. Anyone who thinks that it has anything to do with the present day hasn't watched it. The chancellor is clearly Adolf Hitler not George Bush and certainly not Tony Blair - everyone knows that having an ugly guy shout at people doesn't work anymore - modern politics requires good hair and nice teeth (cabinet members excepted) and that the state is taking over in a much more insidious way than the crude scare mongering of Nazi Germany and V for Vendetta. If you find this thought provoking you are feeble minded! This really scares me because I am genuinely afraid that, if feeble dialogue like this can provoke such thoughts then someone more eloquent could actually incite an anarchist rebellion.
Finally, Guy Fawkes didn't try to blow up parliament because he was a republican nor because the people in general were being oppressed - he tried to blow it up because he was a catholic. True, the suppression of the catholics was bad but it was of a completely different character to V for Vendetta which is more like the general repression of 1984 or the old Soviet Union.