Movie Review

V for Vendetta (2005)

I purposely avoided reading reviews before I saw this movie. Actually, I read enough to see that it was favorably accepted, but I read them months ago and forgot the premise of the film before I watched it this past weekend. If you can imagine a very stylish graphic novel version of the film 1984 with a super hero instead of Winston Smith, and a lighter more swash-buckling tone, you'll get an idea of what V is like.

I'm going to avoid spoilers for a moment and go straight into talking about the acting. Natalie Portman is so incredibly good in this film she is almost too good. Her fear and anguish are so real that they more properly belong in a drama like Schindler's List. But her emotion grounds a film that, without her presence, would not work at all. She carrys this film on her thin shoulders and she does an amazing job.

Why wouldn't this film work without Natalie Portman? Because, V (the super hero) wears a Guy Fawkes mask for the entire film. The actor beneath the mask is Hugo Weaving, who's voice you may recognize as Agent Smith's from The Matrix. While Weaving does a masterful job of overcoming the limitations imposed on an actor by a mask, he needs his precious, tiny little Natalie Portman by his side to make us care.

What is a Guy Fawkes mask you ask? Well, in V it looks like this:

But this is just one version. Read this entertaining post titled "So This Guy in a Guy Fawkes Mask Walks into a Bar..." to learn more. Did Guy Fawkes actually wear a mask? I do not know, but since the mask supposedly looks like him, I imagine not.

Who was Guy Fawkes? Please don't tell Robbo you asked that question. He may thrash you! If you really don't know, you may quietly and discreetly slip away from this site just for a moment here to refresh yourself. Quick now while Robbo isn't looking!

SPOILER ALERT! The rest of this review is for people who've read the graphic novel or seen the movie. I need to talk about the threads in the story that seemed to lead somewhere but didn't end up being used. I didn't know if this was because they were in the graphic novel, but couldn't be tied up neatly in the film OR if it was just sloppiness on the part of the adaptation crew.

For example - V tells Evie early on that "there are no coincidences." This led me to believe that at some point the story would reveal why V had chosen Evie as his quasi-protégé. But their meeting was never explained in this light and it ended up coming off as an accident. From spending 132 minutes with V we know accidents don't happen to him.

Another example of a dropped thread - Evie's friend Deitrich makes "eggy in basket" for breakfast for her, only days after V did the same. Why? If it's not a coincidence then it must the official breakfast of the resistance. But that makes it funny. I couldn't figure out what we were supposed to make of this.

I could go on, but I won't because I want to read the graphic novel to see what I'm missing in this story. This is the second movie adapted from a graphic novel that I've seen which inspired me to want to read the novel. The first was Constantine. Both characters were developed by Alan Moore. I love this guy's apocalyptic vision of the world and I plan to spend some time exploring his work later this year.