Better than I expected

Rating: Null/10 (3 February 2012)

This is the 2005 film adaptation of the comic series published between 1982-1989 that achieved a new notoriety in 2011 when members of the anti-capitalist Occupy movement adopted the stylised Guy Fawkes mask worn by the eponymous libertarian cum terrorist. Although set in London, it was largely shot on sets in the Babelsberg studios outside Berlin (which I have visited) with a crucial final sequence filmed at the long unused Aldwych tube station in London (whose closed entrance I've walked past many times). Also, although many of the support parts are filled by familiar British actors, the two leading roles are taken by non-British thespians who nevertheless affect convincing English accents: English-Australian Hugo Weaving who is V and Israeli- American Natalie Portman as Evey who becomes his companion in arms.
These leading actors have very different experiences on set: we never see Weaving's face and he wears a long wig as well as mask and cloak, whereas Portman is in one sequence stripped down to a hospital-like gown and her face is the subject of unusual focus when she has to lose all of her hair. Characters in this movie - most notably V himself - are more complicated and nuanced than in most such fantasy tales and I was more impressed by the work and it provoked more thought than I was expecting.
Although V has some pretty special physical characteristics and skills, this is no super- hero movie but an altogether more grounded and usually much darker exposition of an avenger with contemporary themes around the need to fight for individual and collective liberty. As a Londoner who has worked in the Houses of Parliament, I had mixed feelings about a plot to blow up the building some four centuries after Fawkes failed and, as a peace-loving democrat, I was troubled by V's propensity to dispense summary justice with some relish, but his character had suffered cruelly and he was on a vendetta.