Wachowski brothers does the 1984 update; otherwise it's an OK film

Rating: 5/10 (22 March 2006)

Anyone who saw Ridley Scott's visually mesmerizing "1984" commercial originally aired only once on Super Bowl will recognize the extent of that influence for this movie.
Larry and Andy are obviously devoted readers of classic literature and Hideo Kojima's video game franchise Metal Gear Solid as both of these influences are instantly recognized throughout the movie.
The former may be recognizable through reciting Shakespeare dialogues; the latter...what? Only if you've played one or all of the Metal Gear Solid video games for the PlayStation and paid attention watching the directing and editing style of cinematic cut scenes, then you will know. Wachowski brothers paid homage to movie fan and Metal Gear creator & game planner Hideo Kojima as a subtle eye wink.
Besides the trivial banter above, V For Vendetta is an interesting movie to watch, albeit a radical and risky major studio movie not seen since Fight Club (a movie I dislike intensely).
Natalie Portman does her best portraying the victim taken under the wing of a masked mystery man who only goes by the name V. A little too stiff, though -- at times she looks like she's portraying yet another cardboard character standby figure in a big Hollywood movie to allow the breathing space for detectives, villains and the mystery man to ramble and commit the deeds to move the movie along from point A to Z.
V seems to have the penchant for spouting pretentious & rambling monologues dreamed up by the Wachowski brothers as if they have to tell the world their unique point of view left out from The Matrix franchise as well as showboating their gift in screenplay writing. That introductionary monologue which frequently use the words starting with the letter 'v' is ludicrously perplexing and cheesily pretentious, just like The Architect's Ph.D professor lecture of a psycho-tech babble monologue in the vapid fun but pointlessly bloated movie The Matrix Reloaded.
The homosexual element in a certain part of the movie feels tackled on, as if the Wachowski brothers have to show their love for female bisexuals and lesbians. Judging from the fact in the trivia section for this movie, they wrote the first draft in the mid-90's, around the time they developed and produced the debut thriller Bound (partly because they have to prove they do have enough talents to make The Matrix Trilogy to convince the skeptical studio executives to greenlight), also featuring lesbian protagonists. This element has little to do with the main story of the movie and only serve as a subplot of no significant importance that pad the length of the movie to over two hours. If anything, Wachowski brothers should do the lesbian answer to Brokeback Mountain. High Art this movie isn't supposed to be.
Other than the complaints above, V For Vendetta serve as a prophetically relevant movie for troubled times in this increasingly unstable world, on par with George Clooney's efficient drama Good Night and Good Luck and Steven Spielberg's ambiguous espionage thriller Munich.
V For Vendetta derive some portions of elements from George Orwell's iconic masterwork 1984 on the iron-fist grip of totalitarianism -- I haven't read the comic book series which inspired this movie -- but I think Kurt Wimmer's movie Equilibrium did it slightly better, to the point in tighter editing and with less thematic bombast.
A noble work of film-making art under the Hollywood studio system, but not quite as good and mesmerizing as the first time I saw Equilibrium when I had zero expectation. It's ironic John Hurt portrays a despotic tyrant in V For Vendetta as a flip side of the coin after he starred as a main protagonist in the film adaptation of 1984 released in theatres 22 years ago.
** 1/2