V for Very Good

Rating: 9/10 (29 August 2006)

Having just read the comic book I really can't see what writer Alan Moore had to complain about ... the film pretty much updates the plot line from the late-eighties Post-Apocalyptic paranoia to today's fear of a terrorist biological weapon attack. The roots of the story, a Britain in the grip of a right-wing totalitarian state and the unquenchable idea of personal freedom however, remain the same.
Hugo Weaving as the eponymous V is quite mesmerising and does a great job of delivering some of the often quite flowery language. Natalie Portman is equally watchable as Evey Hammond who is inadvertently on the run from the forces of the totalitarian state authorities. Obviously she's nice to look at too, but she does strike a good balance between hardy heroine and vulnerable victim.
John Hurt is also well-cast as Sutler - the figurehead of the state - but you can't help thinking that it's a bit too close to Big Brother (the film not the ongoing reality TV nightmare!) and since Hurt acted opposite Burton in the 1984 epic I found it a bit difficult to disassociate the two. There are also some good supporting cameos from Stephen Fry and Rupert Graves.
All in all though it's film that makes you think, whether it will date if and when terrorist threats become a thing of the past I don't know, but in today's political climate of fear, intolerance and prejudice it is all to easy to imagine that even the generally liberal British are only one major attack away from sanctioning some draconian governmental policies. Let's face it ID cards are coming in soon to the UK and that is seen by many as the start of some real Big Brother attention.