Y for Yawn-inspiring

Rating: 4/10 (6 May 2006)

This movie is postmodern. There are many kinds of postmodern, Nirvana's Nevermind being one example of that. But this is closer to the original, confusing concept. Namely, the movie throws in a torrent of ideas, visuals, themes and music that borrow so freely from the past, present and the forecast future as to be eventually boring and implausible.
First of all, the main evil is a man called Sutler. The original Sutler so traumatized the postwar generations that he is popping up in this manner (very unimaginatively - Sutler has a scraggy beard, Hitler had a trim moustache). However, the film is flirting with wartime German history, trying to imagine what life would be like in a totalitarian UK with its own resistant underground forces. The film suggests that Guy Fawkes would be all right in today's world if he were fighting against a totally corrupt regime such as Sutler's. In that case he would have the People's support. The British have had their own Thatcher (1979-90) and she is the closer equivalent of Sutler and the closest we can get to the film's premise in recent memory. Consequently, the film does not bring Fawkes back to modern life.
And therein lies the problem. The film is rooted neither in the past, present or the sci-fi future it tries to capture. Instead, it feeds the audience with visions of a 17th century Guy Fawkes, the BBC, Dell computers, torture, the "V" alien invasion series, biological warfare, riots and revamped swastikas. Do these images connect? No. The central protagonists seem like far too ordinary cops in a precinct trying to nail "V". The general impression is that the film is an overlong episode of a British police series with surreal and grandiose twists such as the blowing up of the Old Bailey.
V speaks a kind of elevated English that we like in historical depictions & Ivory-Merchant stuff but here in this film there are too many people who speak like that. They are like transplants of a bygone era that have been planted on purpose in a modern soil, but it sounds faked or phoney. Changing the register to 'elevated' usually does not elevate any cultural product, if the bottom line has fallen off. In this film it has. The redeeming qualities it has are the close-ups of certain central characters (Evie), the Benny-Hillian bogus episode on TV involving Sutler and the grand detonation of the Parliament House toward the end.