The best movie out this year?

Rating: 9/10 (22 March 2006)

And so we come to the Wachowskis' first non-Matrix project since Bound and one can't help thinking that they could've picked a concept a little further away from their established territory. V for Vendetta represents a radical lack of change in direction for the brothers but, when they're on this sort of form, one can forgive them for treading familiar paths. Of course, this is not to say that Andy and Larry are purely responsible for V for Vendetta, credit must go to James McTeigue, whose first sortie into direction, albeit heavily under the influence of the Wachowskis, shows an excellent grasp of his craft.
V for Vendetta, henceforth just V, is an astonishingly stylish film, bringing together all the darkness and rich, vibrant colour one would expect from a graphic novel adaptation and linking the images with, mostly, a fitting and enjoyable innovative cinematography. At no point are you left thinking 'This is much more than a comic book adaptation,' but when the images are this good you don't really care. However, you cannot live on style alone and McTeigue, with his two parental peers overseeing him, delivers on the heart aspect of V well. By focusing on Natalie Portman's Evey we get a human perspective of the dystopic world of an English fascist future. To Evey V is initially every bit as intimidating as the government that oppresses her and killed her family. Her fear of V and her desire to be normal again are both realistic and sympathetic, the latter being much harder to show without turning the audience against Evey. However, this trick is performed with real skill and little obviousness about it so that we don't hate her for her wish to be free of V.
Unfortunately, where the film doesn't work is equally clear. Portman's accent, as has been widely reported, is awful and must be chalked up as a clear negative. It would've practically been better, although anathema to purist readers of the original source material, to have Evey be an American living in London rather than endure Portman's mockney twittering, which is every bit as irksome as Dick Van Dyke or Don Cheadle in Mary Poppins and Oceans 11/12 respectively.
Why then not simply have cast someone else in the role? Well the answer to that is also simple: Portman is fantastic as Evey, imbuing her with a full range of emotions as her character endures everything from torture to love during the roller-coaster ride she inadvertently joins. The accent aside, Portman's Evey almost drips with sincerity and heart, two qualities without which, as I've mentioned, the film would have failed drastically.
And what of Hugo? Well Agent Smith is on well trodden ground with this film. Covered up throughout by an expressionless mask, Weaving does his best to instill V with a character and mostly does well, creating the mixture of great strength and intense vulnerability that all superheroes, which V is albeit in the antiheroic Batman style, must have to appeal to an audience who are instinctively jealous and distrustful of their powers. Weaving does what is required to the best of his abilities and pulls off the impressive coup of making us emote with someone who is, effectively, little more than a robot whose moral outrage has enforced his descent into supposedly terrorist activities.
Overall this movie is both great fun and thought provoking, rather like the original Matrix film. It's portrayal of a future where the merging of a totalitarian government with a pliant media keeps the entire population under control is extremely pertinent to today's climate of fear the likes of George Bush and Tony Blair are trying to create, backed up by the people in charge of corporations, which are also represented in V as the main beneficiaries when human populations are afraid and therefore consume more. You could write, or read, books on how prevalent this attitude is at the moment and it is nice to see a Hollywood blockbuster so openly tackle the subject, though it does so with half an eye on the stopwatch...
...Which is why the film works so well. Andy and Larry may have blundered hugely with the Matrix sequels but here they have constrained themselves and, although V is a long movie, it never feels slow. Similarly for a modern action flick there is a surprising dearth of slow motion fight scenes. Yet, despite this, you never feel yourself losing interest or itching to press some sort of cinematic fast forward button, thanks to the chemistry and sincerity of all involved and, equally importantly, the way the film pans out. The pacing is generally excellent and the tension, when it comes, is all the more powerful because of the holding back on the CG, special effects and violence. V's final battle, for example, would never have worked emotionally if he'd spent the whole film doing equally, or more, impressive things. Instead we have a payoff that, like the final scenes of the original Matrix, is utterly engrossing and highly emotive.
Beyond that there's not much to say. There are problems beyond Portman's accent V's wordiness jars the nerves a little and the lack of an expression on our antihero becomes frustrating too. At over two hours the movie is a little overlong and the final conclusion perhaps a little too pat. However, these issues are relatively minor and often forgotten when the next scene swings by. The excellent Stephen Rea deserves much credit here for the way he takes an explanatory character (someone simply present to explain/'discover' V's motives) and makes a real person out of him. Most of the other support is top notch too.
Therefore I strongly urge you to see this film and, hopefully, enjoy it as much as I have. To those of you out that who might hesitate, after the Matrices Reloaded and Revolutions, take heart the Wachowski's are back on form.