Interesting but not outstanding

Rating: 5/10 (8 September 2006)

The movie depicts an utopic British society ruled by a totalitarian regime "Ã la Big Brother". The whole country has strangely turned fascist twenty years before after a short period of social anarchy following an deadly viral pendemy. One mysterious man with special abilities, high culture, and a wicked sense of humor comes then to the rescue to wake the apathic society.
Tempo of the movie is good and there are some special effects, but the quality of the movie lays on actors. Performance of Hugo Weaving should be praised here. He expresses feelings of his personnage (V himself) only with body language and voice as V wears a mask. Other actors do their job rather well, but I didn't see outstanding performances.
As for the film itself, it could be seen as a political pamphlet, but some of the messages conveyed are too simplistic to be a strong backbone of the story (eg. "democracy is better than tyranny", "don't be apathic in front of a unjust government", etc.). There are many other political movies outthere (Z, I comme Icare, All the President's Men, 1984, Wag the Dog, etc.) that have more deeper and interesting messages.
Also, I didn't believe much in the totalitarian and isolated British regime depicted there, as everything looks like normal in daily life and everybody seems to find this normal as well. This is not very credible as most of the protagonists lived in the democratic society as we know it twenty years before. But, yeah, I don't make a fuzz of out this as this is only a movie.
Overall I like the movie but would not but in my A-1 list or buy the DVD. It was entertaining, just that.