Badly made and offensive to boot

Rating: 1/10 (27 November 2016)

Words alone cannot convey how utterly loathsome I found this movie to be. I'd heard all the hype beforehand – how it was the 'next big thing', how it's even garnered a place in the Internet Movie Database's Top 250 films of all time (above Hitchcock and Scorsese, no less). I think it's fair to say that I was expecting a decent film when I finally sat down to watch it one evening. What a let down. V FOR VENDETTA is nothing more than a liberal's idle fantasy writ large on screen.
From the word go this is a monstrous mess. We're thrown into yet another Big Brother-controlled futuristic society (yawn) where individuality is condemned and the sinister government watches our every move. Our heroine is supposedly a tough, streetwise Londoner, and somebody decided to cast butter-wouldn't-melt Natalie Portman in the role. Oh my god! Not only does her English accent sound stupid – not fitting the character at all – but her acting is unbelievably poor, and frequently laughable in places. Not that she's given much acting to do. This is a film written by a GCSE English student who thinks sub-Shakespeare standard dialogue is the height of literary brilliance. Can you say PRETENTIOUS? The second 'V' arrived and began spouting some absolutely inane gibberish I knew this was going to be bad, but I had little idea of just how bad it was going to turn out.
It's an offensive, violent mess, in which the sprawling action scenes are choreographed to uninteresting boredom. The film toys with Nazi symbolism throughout, to the extent that we see concentration camps with inmates being buried in mass graves. Wow, taking real-life history and using it to add controversy to your money-making film? That's pretty low – and far more objectionable than the many low budget exploitation horrors I usually watch. And, sigh, it turns out that Christians are bad as usual. Why not pick another religion? Oh, I know, there would be an outcry and a fuss, that's why.
At least Hugo Weaving gets to hide behind a mask to spare his blushes for the film's duration. Not so Stephen Fry, who looks distinctly embarrassed to appear in this mess, or a slumming John Hurt. Worst of all is Stephen Rea, who has lots of scenes as the detective investigating 'V'. He's saddled with one of the most boring characters in film history, and is given WAY too much screen time. No wonder he looks like he's asleep for most of the time. I'm sorry, and I hate to say it, but this film's absolute junk.