Dir. James McTeigue, US/Germany, 2005, 132 mins
Cast: Natalie Portman, Hugo Weaving, John Hurt, Stephen Rea
Review by Carol Allen
It would be easy to dismiss V for Vendetta as a bit of a mish mash, because it embraces so many genres. It’s part political satire, part thriller, part detective story, action movie, and sci fi, while it also pays homage to or rips off depending on your point of view a number of other films, including 1984, this time with John Hurt playing the Big Brother figure screaming at his subjects from a screen, and Phantom of the Opera, only without the music.
I however much enjoyed it. For a start, there is it’s anarchic story. Any film selling itself on the tagline “People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people” has got my interest. Written and produced by the Wachowski Brothers of The Matrix fame, the premise of the film is Britain as a totalitarian state ruled by the Chancellor (John Hurt). The title character V (Hugo Weaving), horribly disfigured in an accident at a government detention centre, where scientists experiment on human beings, hides his face behind a Guy Fawkes mask and plots to blow up the Houses of Parliament, while his reluctant accomplice Evey (Natalie Portman) is an orphan whose parents were murdered by the state.
It starts with some terrific action sequences – V rescuing Evey from a group of curfew officers intent on rape, and taking her to view his explosive destruction of the Old Bailey, where, as he puts it, “justice has taken a holiday”. He follows that up with an imaginative and anarchic raid on the state controlled British Television Network (formerly the BBC?), which is a bit of a beginner’s guide to terrorist techniques, come to think of it. After that though, despite being based on a graphic novel, it becomes surprisingly dialogue heavy. V himself is positively verbose and it is a bit of a problem having long speeches coming from behind an impassive mask. Not, however, the fault of Weaving, playing a man who is a contradictory mixture of terrorist, freedom fighter, vengeful assassin and sensitive and cultured lover. The centre of the film does have a lot of history to fill us in on, which is largely revealed through Stephen Rea and Rupert Graves as detectives, who in their hunt for V and Evey uncover a lot of things the state does not wish to be known. Although apparently set some fifteen years in the future, the look of the film and the world it describes is more of the day after tomorrow, referencing many of the disturbing aspects and threats of now. The population being controlled by fear of terrorism and avian flu, the use of retinal detection, news media being ruthlessly spin doctored by the government and detention camps with prisoners dressed in Guantánamo Bay orange. Even though the Chancellor is shown as having risen through the ranks of the Conservative party, some of the measures he has introduced are uncomfortably close to today’s New Labour ideas. There’s a scene in a pub however, where the film makers have really got it wrong. Someone is smoking – no chance of that in tomorrow’s Britain!
Although largely shot on soundstages in Germany, being set in London it has a largely British supporting cast. As well as Rea and Graves, there are strong performances from Sinead Cusack as a government scientist, Roger Allam as a right wing television Holy Harry, Tim Pigott Smith as the secret police chief and John Standing as a bishop with a taste for little girls. I was particularly taken with Stephen Fry as a television presenter, who falls foul of the authorities when he lampoons the Chancellor on his show. Though what seals his fate is not that, nor his secret collection of gay porn and forbidden art works but the fact that among them is a copy of the Koran.
Despite its faults, I found the film very engaging and if you get a bit restless during all the politic speak, you’ve always got the impressive and much hyped climax to look forward to: an army of Guy Fawkes masked citizens marching down Whitehall as V and Evey put on a fireworks display that puts Ken Livingstone’s millennium event to shame.
