Unimpressive in any capacity

Rating: 3/10 (4 August 2006)

Yes, I read the book first, and had a long love affair with it. No, I am not merely spiting an inexact adaptation onto the big screen.
Viewed as a film without any knowledge of the source, V seems to be a competent action thriller with a slightly deeper hold on plot and character development than most others. However, even here, certain themes and repeated images lifted from the book are misused and partially presented, and to the uninitiated viewer stick out like sore thumbs. However, the cinematography was largely rather good, and there are a number of very solid performances, including Portman, who remains a good actress despite her rubbish English accent.
Viewed as an adaptation, V is an outright failure. By only having the slightest grasp on the reason for the events of the book and excising anything that could be seen as genuinely risky in favour of extreme, grotesque violence, the Wachowskis have essentially gutted this story of its power and meaning. Certainly, they made a lot of conscious decisions about changes they were making to the behaviour and backgrounds of the characters, and most likely with the best intentions. However, these choices uncover incongruities in the plot and result in a generally unconvincing portrayal of the dystopian England of the film, as well as its inhabitants. In addition, there are numerous unintentionally comic moments that betray an inability to escape from the overblown action-movie mentality that made the Wachowskis famous, including the world's least tactfully-filmed hanging at the very beginning.
The inclusion of verbatim moments from the book would normally be absolutely par for the course in an adaptation like this, but given the way in which the Wachowskis altered the fundamental motivations and philosophies of the story, they feel like a dumb movie ripping off the clever bits from a totally separate work. It would be easy to accept this on the level of a simple popcorn flick were it not for all the pretence of intellectual maturity that the Wachowskis ladled upon it, but were clearly not qualified to deliver on. I only hope it doesn't take too long for somebody else to have a slightly better-thought-out crack at this.