Director: James McTeigue
Writer: Andy Wachowski & Larry Wachowski
Starring: Natalie Portman, Hugo Weaving, Stephen Fry
It is a pity that Alan Moore will probably never see this film. More than that, it is a pity that many other people will not see it either, or may dismiss it as another comic book movie. It is not. It is a bold political statement wrapped up in a popular form.
The change of medium from serial comic book to movie demands that the tale be told in a different way, but the essence of the story remains the same. It remains faithful to its source without being a slavish rendition. For fans of the original graphic novel, the opening 10-15 minutes may seem a little jarring, but once the film gets going, many familiar scenes are played out almost verbatim.
For those unfamiliar with the story, it is set in a near future Britain, ruled by an Orwellian Big Brother style government. The film opens with a brief history lesson on the significance of the 5th of November (presumably for non-UK audiences), which helps provide a context for the events which then unfold.
The film proper starts with a young woman, Evey Hammond, dressing and then going out into the dismal streets. She is attacked by secret policemen and rescued by a mysterious masked figure – V.
V is an enigma. He speaks in Shakespearean monologues, but has the combat moves of an action hero. His entrance is a little ‘dense’ and it is perhaps as well that Evey is a more complex and sophisticated character in the film than the ‘book’. She provides the moral centre for the story and as such, she is very effective. One minor quibble is the somewhat ‘posh’ accent that Portman adopts, which slips occasionally into the transatlantic.
The first major set-piece of the film involves the destruction of an important landmark. Without much pause, V continues his campaign and broadcasts a speech to the nation calling on them to rise up a year hence on the 5th of November. This framing device provides an element of dramatic tension as the various forces try to solve the mystery, catch V and prevent his plans from coming to fruition against a hard timetable.
Steven Rea is convincing as the downtrodden, non conformist detective Finch who is assigned to the case. His investigation into V’s past and motives takes him through a world of secret pasts and difficult questions. The machinations of ‘Party’ politics, and the inherent power struggles within such a structure are used to good effect, but there is a sense that the time for revolution and change is near.
V is the catalyst as much as he is the orchestrator of the events that unfold, and while the parallels to Guy Fawkes are, on the surface, obvious, Fawkes’ motives were religious, not political, and his fate was to become a national figure of ridicule as a villain rather than a hero. This point has perhaps been lost on recent generations of British subjects, so is forgivable for a foreign film-maker.
More recent social and political events are commented on in a convincing and thought provoking way. The return to traditional English values could manifest itself in the fascist policies of being anti-everything else. The events which led to the creation of the current state in V are central to the story and are best left unexplored, but fortunately early rumours that the premise was a ‘Fatherland’ style successful invasion by Germany in WW2 are unfounded.
As you might expect from the Wachowski Brothers, the film contains some excellent action sequences. They are also, in some respects, quite subdued and, unlike the latter Matrix movies, there is a human quality to the action which draws the viewer in rather than reminding them that they are a spectator.
The overall tone of the movie is one of hope. If we have faith in our own integrity, good will triumph over evil, but it also contains a dangerous and potentially unsettling core value. The story may be cloaked in traditional garb with a message that freedom, love and passion are more important than order and safety but the really subversive reminder is that sometimes the terrorists are freedom fighters.
As a film it is not perfect. At times it lacks subtlety and the viewer is occasionally told what to think rather than shown the events and left to decide, but it is none the less a very entertaining and thought provoking film. On that basis and on a scale of 1 to 5, the film has to score V.
John Davidson Despite working in IT for the last 20 years and collecting comics for even longer, he is married, has two young daughters and lives in Scotland. Ideally he spends his spare time reading and watching movies, but this is curtailed by the calls of child-rearing and part-time study, not to mention the 'call of the internet'.