Good plot, Good acting, problematic movie...

Rating: 6/10 (4 November 2012)

Having read the comics I was expecting a good plot - not a perfect adaptation of the comics - a good plot, and it is here and works fine.
The other strength of this movie is of course Natalie Portman, who always does a convincing job. The problem is she does it in an unconvincing movie!!
and here we arrive at the major problem of this movie: The pacing. This is a very popular problem in modern film. The pacing is horrible - the scenes come and go very fast, asking you to believe a lot without giving you real content to hold on to. The result: 1. V for Vendetta has no exposition, you hardly ever learn anything about any of the characters, making their development uninteresting. Why? because their characters have no start point to compare to. (excepting the inspector, who is an example of a well-written character)
2. With no exposition and no time taken to introduce Portman's character, it is not easy to care for her or identify with her. Same goes for V himself. The touchy-feely side of this movie doesn't work at all.
3. The third and last problem is that since the pacing is so fast, the writers did not really have the time to build any mystery around V and his plans. Beside one good twist, you can pretty much guess where each scene is going, and is constantly being fed "facts" with a spoon. V's cunning can be compared to the Joker on The Dark Knight. They are both agents of Chaos. Yet while the Joker is the master of violent surprise, everything on V for Vendetta feels like a dreamy Deja Vu.
In a sense, the entire movie can be viewed as Evey's Dream, and that may be intentional, but this constant unreal feeling made me more sleepy than interested. This movie is nice but will not make you stand up and protest again the ones enslaving you. It is more likely to send you off to sleep!