You don't have to cover your face to wear a mask...

Rating: 7/10 (9 November 2019)

"V For Vendetta" is a 2005 comic book drama directed by James McTeigue starring Hugo Weaving and Natalie Portman. As it is sort of a holiday for cinephiles and most of us tend to rewatch it on that particular date, I tried to give it a first time watch myself this year, but unfortunately I had to postpone it due to a punk concert I've visited instead, but now - a few days later - coincidentally on a date that bears a tremendous political importance in Germany, I finally got to see it. So I think this will make it up to it. First of all, this film shows us a dystopian society that has a lot in common with several classic novels. Unfortunately though, there's not enough to it that makes it distinct, it's not as well elaborated as I hoped it would be. There's no explanation of why it happened and doesn't offer any chance to learn about the circumstances. But that's only a minor flaw. What I think was excellently done is the dialogue and the meaning behind every single line. It's so tremendously intelligent and thought provoking and the choice of words is only superb. It effects the viewer to intensively think about the own society one lives in. Furthermore, it's alarming to see how the corrupt government misuses the media for their own, misleading interests and how it is close to it's real-life counterpart at times. It's actually sad to say that the reality doesn't always differ from what is depicted in here. Next to this, the sensational cast really shows that it has top-class actors and actresses in its ranks, especially Portman and Weaving (is it even him, though? Serious question) and it's stylishly filmed and captured the essence of the graphic novel very well. It doesn't recoil to tackle highly inconvenient topics, such as propaganda, mistreatment of human beings and media and the abuse of power. Also, it offers a lot of highly quotable exclamations, but there's still one big issue that prevents it from being a masterpiece: The narrative structure. The film is way to long in general and it has too many scenes that should have been either cut or shortened, but as they are still in the final cut, they perturb the storytelling tremendously. The absolutely well worded scenes and following actions would have had way more impact and would have striked the chord way more unpleasantly if it didn't have so many lengths in it. The buildup of tension was immensely disrupted my multiple scenes that simply lasted to long and, as harsh as it sound, made the tension vanish on several occasions. Each time it seemed to reach the perfect level again, it failed to do so. After seeing this happen a few time it was frustrating. The final act though redeemed the overall unbalanced second act and showed the brilliance it had in the first act. Additionally, it didn't reach the emotional depth I was hoping to see, but that's just mentioned casually. All in all, this dystopian drama knows what it stands for and offers the right approaches, appropriate performances and twists and extremely intelligent lines, besides the disastrous storytelling it's an enjoyable and important flick that makes us reflect our own view to our own society. It's no masterpiece and it's such a pity that it had so much potential to be one.