Visionary

Rating: 9/10 (20 March 2006)

Some of us read the book by Alan Moore many years ago. Some of us regard it as at least as good as his oft-lauded opus, Watchmen. Some of us were very wary indeed when we heard there was to be a film version... and even more so when it transpired that Moore himself had refused to have anything to do with it... to be credited, even.
Some of us went to see it anyway and are so very glad we did. What an amazing film. In an unusual climate of heavy political movie-making comes this: a fantasy thriller with all the adventure, action and, well, silliness you could want, but nevertheless a political message you cannot ignore to boot. If anything, Moore's strident left-wing opinions are given even more weight than his own original work carries  now that the reader must find them a quarter of a century out of date. Surely, he must be proud of this film and the ingenious way it has updated his ideas to reflect the current political situation?
You can pick holes, of course. I got used to Portman's imperfect accent a lot more quickly than I did the Wachowski brothers' occasionally overcooked outsider's take on scripting English characters, though. And V's introduction  all 'v'-word alliteration  is badly misconceived and had me worrying for a minute or two. But things soon settle down and though it's been a few years, I can say that almost all the major examples of Moore's brilliance that I could recall and was hoping would have been translated from the page are here on screen - meaning moments of considerable shock and horror, beauty, emotion and profundity. The double-barred-cross softening of the fascist-church imagery is a tiny niggle in the face of scenes such as: the padeophile Bishop; Evey facing her fear; the whole Valerie / The Salt Flats story; the bedside chat - victim and villain reversed; and the daring (in light of all-too-recent horrendous real-world events) inclusion of the London tube bomb, exactly as in the original.
Better still, the additional/extrapolated material  lots of stuff about the Koran and Muslims being persecuted, the 'formerly United States', bird flu etc.  and the whole subplot involving Stephen Fry's character (ultimately harrowing in the extreme) are actually improvements on Moore's anti- Thatcher polemic. This story could scarcely be more relevant in the now. Sue Perkins, reviewing the film on ITV, was annoyed that the future fascist British government is depicted as having come out of the Conservative Party - fearing the film- makers had missed a trick, but in fact, herself, completely missing the subtler point that our current Labour administration (which she is not alone in deploring certain actions of), in moving the 'centre' further to the right, is indeed undermining the left-wing alternative for our democracy and making it more likely that a far-right movement such as is depicted in the film could feasibly emerge (the gods forbid). Where else would it come out of? The distopia shown in the film is precisely what the worst subset of Tory supporters  specifically Daily Mail readers  want for our country!
Another critic who got it wrong was Jonathan Ross (on the BBC's Film programme). He absolutely hated V for Vendetta and urged his viewers to give it a miss. Thank goodness I didn't listen  fortunately, he'd mentioned that he found Moore's comic 'overrated', so I was able to add another 'wary' to my expectations  but on the other side of the balance. That balance is now tipping  the film magazines are awarding 3 and 4 stars out of 5, and the mixed audience I sat with on a Sunday afternoon were certainly gripped from start to finish. Don't miss it!