OK, but not nearly as good as everyone seems to think it is

Rating: 4/10 (7 December 2006)

Amazing! Best film of 2005! Must see! Utterly cool! Greatest film I have ever seen! Steady, people, who are we kidding here? This entertaining nonsense was just average at best.
That terrible, terrible Benny Hill comedy routine? Natalie Portman's laughable "romantic" scene where she kisses V's mask? Periodic outbreaks of appallingly stilted dialogue and wooden acting? That laboured "we must explain in words of one syllable to the Yanks who Guy Fawkes was" sequence at the beginning? Silly Matrix homages which hang, draw and quarter your disbelief: e.g. V's sword-fighting scene with the cops? Plot holes you could lose, well, the Houses of Parliament in? A totally pants revolution where everyone just dresses up like plonkers and gawks at fireworks? Film of the year? Really? Come on.
Worst of all, how does blowing up the beautiful Houses of Parliament (the "Mother of Parliaments" no less) strike a blow for freedom? The bad guys were all dead - all someone had to do was walk in the front door and retake the old H's of P in the name of the people.
Answer: narrative imperative - you gotta blow 'em up, otherwise what would have been the point of all that Guy Fawkes stuff? And, let's admit it, it was rather fun. Heaven knows how many times Hollywood has blown up the White House on screen - so it made a change.
The trouble is the bad guys just aren't bad and oppressive enough and V is a pretentious, prissy arse. John Hurt (as the "chancellor") is more pitiful than evil and all the people you see in the retirement homes, family houses and so on all look remarkably well fed, clean, disease-free and unoppressed.
Sure, there is the odd truly frightening moment when you see how good the film could have been. For example, the abduction of Stephen Fry's character by the secret police was particularly striking. However, most of the supposedly "shocking" scenes (such as that ridiculous persecuted-lesbian story) that we're supposed to recoil at seem so out of place, and are so in your face isn't-it-just-terrible-darling, that they soon become mawkish and even rather comical.
It has to be said that the plot was quite sophisticated and had some good twists - and some ridiculous ones. I haven't read the graphic novel, but I get the impression that much of the story was close enough to the original to satisfy most fans. The ever-watchable Stephen Rea somehow managed to keep a straight face though it all and the film was just absorbing enough for me to see it through to the end, though I nearly gave up a couple of times.
People, if you really want to see a couple of "amazing, must see" films that really bring home the terror and the absurdity of totalitarianism, watch the astonishing 1984 made in 1984 (also starring John Hurt) or try Terry Gilliam's masterpiece, Brazil.