"Beauty and the Beast" meets "Fahrenheit 911"

Rating: 5/10 (20 March 2006)

I'm surprised to read so many comments saying that "V for Vendetta" was brilliant, complex, and thought-provoking. I would describe it as formulaic and heavy-handed, sometimes embarrassingly so. I enjoyed it nonetheless, but not as much as I hoped I would.
Natalie Portman is excellent as Evey, and the movie is perhaps worth seeing for her alone. Her transformation from a scared young woman into a fearless freedom fighter is nothing short of inspiring. I had tears in my eyes as Evey, alone in her prison cell, found and read Valerie's final message.
That's where my praise stops. I suppose Weaving did the best possible job of portraying V, but his character seemed too much a Zorro-esquire clichÃ©, his dialogue too artificial, for me to really identify with him. And the romance between V and Evey left me unimpressed - the whole storyline is almost laughably similar to Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" (right down to the ballroom scene).
"V for Vendetta" might still have succeeded as a fascinating and subtle political commentary. But the political events and their implications are laid out with a heavy hand; little or nothing is left to the viewer's imagination. The oppressive Sutler regime is a clear reference to both the current Bush regime and to the Nazi party (notice the red flags with black crosses on them). All the government figures (with the exception of Dr. Surridge) are exaggeratedly evil. And as if this wasn't enough, in the last third of the movie Detective Finch (I think) gives a lengthy narrative in which he tells the viewer *exactly* what is going on. No thinking required.
(The movie could yet have redeemed itself as eye candy. But alas, as my boyfriend pointed out, "V for Vendetta" is visually quite ordinary. Its imagery has none of the same flare as the Matrix trilogy. The several slow-mo fight scenes feel out of place.) In summary, I didn't feel challenged by this movie, intellectually, morally, or emotionally. Natalie Portman is great, everyone else is fine, the special effects are decent, the pace is relatively entertaining. But "V for Vendetta" certainly wasn't a life-changing or even a week-changing event for me.