England Prevails

Rating: Null/10 (26 March 2011)

'V for Vendetta' is set a near future London which, in appearance, is not so different from today - except this is a brutal totalitarian dictatorship where the secret police break down doors in the middle of the night, put black bags over their suspects' heads and then drag them off - never to be seen again.
This society is ruled over by the grim ageing face of High Chancellor Strutter (John Hurt), who is only ever seen on giant TV screens. The nemesis of this regime is an anonymous terrorist called V (Hugo Weaving), who wears a Guy Fawkes mask and begins the film by blowing up the Old Bailey, then declares he will do the same to Parliament on November 5th. Unwittingly involved with him are the TV PA Evy (Natalie Portman) - who V saves from being raped by two police thugs - and pursuing him is the downbeat but decent police inspector Finch (Stephen Rea).
The movie has its origins as an Alan Moore graphic novel, but it also recalls those other dystopian classics like 1984, BRAZIL and FATHERLAND, especially the latter with Finch uncovering a dark secret hidden by the state - the germ warfare attack which lead to Strutter's rise was engineered by Strutter's party and that V was the only survivor of the same biological experiments.
As well as being scary and creepy, satirical elements feature prominently. I like Roger Allam's manic right-wing TV pundit who ends his nightly rants with the blessing "England prevails". Also Stephen Fry as a gay chat show host who satirises Strutter in a Benny Hill-type sketch and subsequently disappears after a visit by the secret police.
Amidst the bleakness, there is hope. V turns Strutter's own Police Chief (a nasty Tim Piggot Smith) against the Chancellor, followed by a mass public uprising on November 5th with the citizens of London descending on Parliament wearing Guy Fawkes masks. V dies, but Evy places his body in a tube train loaded with explosives and sends it hurtling towards Parliament.
If 1984 was a projection of 1940s fears, then V FOR VENDETTA is a projection onto an imagined future of early 21st century fears about the erosion of civil liberties. Curiously - like CHILDREN OF MEN - in this future England has survived but the United States has ceased to exist (it's now the world's biggest leper colony).