Before I saw V for Vendetta, I was determined to judge it on its own merits. The graphic novel is a dense and complex work, and there's no way to make even the best of all possible movies without cutting plot corners and simplifying themes. Not to mention that it's been impossible to avoid the controversy surrounding Alan Moore and his reactions. So I wanted to put as much of that out of my mind as possible and to see if the film stands or falls on its own merits. Unfortunately, my answer is a maddening "yes and no." I'm going to talk about spoilers, so maybe we'd best move to the other side of the jump.
NOTE: I wrote this before I read Greg's review, and although I echo a couple of his points, I've decided to run this as written rather than write around them or replace them with "What Greg said."
The first thing that struck me in the movie is its odd pacing. It starts with the requisite action scene, as V rescues Evey (Natalie Portman) from the Fingermen, and then we see the destruction of the Old Bailey, but in between there's talking, talking, talking. Exposition is necessary in a film, but it should never slam the breaks on it. V's opening monologue, voluminous in violet verbosity, was far more likely to have come from the pen of Stan Lee than Alan Moore. When V takes Evey to the Shadow Gallery, the film slows down even further, as V explains himself at even more length.
Outside of the relationship between V and Evey, we never get a full enough view of the government or life in this England of the future. The government uses 1984-ish slogans, and some of the imagery leans very heavily on the color black with red highlights, so the movie falls back on its audience's recognition of film dictators. Although it seems to like the trappings of authoritarianism, the government gives little or no demonstration that it's particularly heavy-handed. Although V tells us that a government should be afraid of its people rather than the people being afraid of the government, we see no real indication that these people are afraid of their government. V takes over the airwaves, and the film shows a family, people in an old folks' home, and patrons of a pub listening quietly. No one seems particularly concerned that they're seeing anything they're not supposed to. Nobody considers turning off the TV in fear. Even more, when TV host Gordon Deitrich (Stephen Fry) features a segment on his show ridiculing the government's leader (which is funny), no one's concerned. Deitrich, who certainly should know better, expects a slap on the wrist. His audience sits and laughs. In a truly authoritarian society with jackboot thugs as enforcers, the public doesn't have the luxury of a good laugh at the dictator's expense, and they know it.
So then, what is V fighting for? He tells Creedy, the head of the Fingermen, that Creedy can't kill him because he's an idea. But if the government and the society don't look so bad, what is that idea? That a government should be nicer to its constituents? That nobody likes jackboot thugs, anyway? It's not entirely clear. When the tens of thousands of citizens show up in London in their own V masks (which V sent out en masse--where does he get his resources, and doesn't a government with its hands around the necks of its populace have the ability to trace a damn package?), the message they're sending is muddled. I guess they're supporting a coup to replace the existing authorities with a V cult of personality.
I said in the beginning of this review that I was intending to keep the comparisons with the comics to a minimum, but I can't keep them out completely. The centerpiece of the film, as it is of the graphic novel, is Evey's imprisonment, torture, and awakening. The portrayal of the imprisonment is perhaps the most moving part of the film, but Valerie's letter doesn't quite connect. Since we haven't really seen the extreme punitive nature of this state, we don't get the feeling that Valerie is one of countless similar stories. We haven't seen the government crack down on gays and lesbians, so the film didn't lay the groundwork necessary to make this a powerful story. We feel sorry for her, but it's not clear how this relates to Evey or to the movie as a whole. But the aftermath of Evey's experience is more troublesome. In the comics, V has a fair amount of room to explain himself and his actions. Not everyone who reads it is convinced of his explanation, but at least his intentions are understandable. The movie doesn't (and can't, really) give him as much room, so we're mostly left with, "Trust me, it was for your own good." (My wife was also bothered by the fact that, although even V's skin was burned off in the fire that destroyed Larkhill, he somehow was able to save Valerie's toilet-paper missive. Alas, not even Moore and Lloyd give us any help there.
The performances were adequate. I like many of the actors, so I was happy to see them, but I didn't really think they inhabited their roles. Natalie Portman is very appealing, but I'm not sure she was strong enough to carry this film. Although Hugo Weaving brought a lot of life to V despite the fact that he was hidden behind an inarticulate mask, he couldn't overcome his lack of facial movement completely. John Hurt was suitably overbearing as Adam Sutler, and Stephen Rea plodded through as Edward Finch, but neither rose above the lines in the script. And I always enjoy seeing Stephen Fry, even if he was saddled with the albatross of delivering the "eggy in a basket" line.On the plus side, except for my complaints about the fight choreography, the film looks great. David Lloyd has every right to be proud of how his visuals were brought to life. I'm not at all surprised that he's had no problem getting on board with the film.
Despite my best intentions, I don't know how much of the original work I brought with me into the theater. Although I tried not to make comparisons between the two media, I'm not sure how much my knowledge was able to fill plot holes that would leave a non-comics reader wondering. My wife, though, hasn't read the graphic novel but didn't seem to have any trouble following along. So I'd give the movie a warmed-over recommendation. It'll keep its audience distracted for a couple of hours. And that's all director James McTeigue ever claimed to want.
" No one seems particularly concerned that they're seeing anything they're not supposed to."
Then again, they're conditioned that anything on TV is there because the government wants it to be there. By definition, if it's on TV, it's okay to watch.
It would be a little different if V broadcast on a pirate TV station. But there seems to only be one channel, controlled by the state, and V used that one.
I have to say, I thought that the changes made to bring it to film from the book were a bit jarring, and in some cases I wondered why they were made.
However, my wife (who hadn't read the book) thought this was one of the best "action" films she'd seen in a long time. She hadn't expected anything nearly so subversive - when I asked her about it, she figured that it would be a typical Hollywood action film with an unsubtle, screedy message tacked onto it.
She was very moved by the letter from Valerie, despite the fact that the setup for the government's actions were really just words from the players - people like V and Gordon who had pointed out how gays had been treated. It didn't matter, because she could connect it to things we've seen our own people do, even if the things in V's dystopian future are a dark exaggeration of what is happening now.
As for why people aren't sitting in fear of the government, well they are. But its the fear that the average German citizen felt, not the gay or Gypsy or Jewish Germans felt - the fear to speak up and say something. Gordon was afraid - he had it from all angles too - but he thought he'd be able to get away with it. (I actually think he knew he'd get in trouble, but that it had reached the point where he had to say something - the example that V had given to him combined with Evey knowing his secrets pushed him to action that he knew would lead to imprisonment, but that's just my read on it.)
They toned V down from the book, a mistake I personally think, but one that I understand. They still didn't make him totally sympathetic - he's still a monster, he still can't be a normal person - but they made him sympathetic enough that the viewer would be able to understand his motives and sympathize with him. In the book, V is fairly unsympathetic, his redemption is that he knows that the world that he was made to create has no place for him in it - that someone else will have to lead people to building that world from the ashes of the one he destroys. He's a monster that the old world created, and he acts in monstrous ways - culminating in the "transformation" of Evey from a reactor to an actor. He may have done it out of love, but its his twisted monstrous version of love and not anything recognizable as human.
The message in the movie is similar, but V is less of a monster. The monster angle is still here, but weakened - he's now "TV ugly" instead of "ugly ugly". It actually makes his imprisonment and torment of Evey more jarring, really, because we expect him to be human, and what he does to Evey is so inhumane. He's less morally ambiguous than in the book (though still more ambiguous than your typical action hero or superhero), and the cause that he fights for is also less ambiguous - anarchy versus tight-fisted order is a tough choice, democracy versus fascism ... not so much.
Overall, I thought it was a good movie, but a poor adaptation. The underlying message of the book was definitely transformed from the book to the movie, though, fortunately, not undermined - they didn't pull a "Little Mermaid" on the story. The "good guys" are more clearly heroic, the "bad guys", strangely, are less overtly evil (possibly because they don't need to be quite as bad to counterbalance the "good guys"?), and England as a whole is more stable and less dark. I think this may be the effect of the American storytellers envisioning a media-driven dystopia, instead of Moore's more traditional military-enforced dystopia of the book, but I think I'm going to need to watch it again to get my thoughts fully gelled.
"No one seems particularly concerned that they're seeing anything they're not supposed to."Then again, they're conditioned that anything on TV is there because the government wants it to be there. By definition, if it's on TV, it's okay to watch.
But that makes them sheep, accepting of anything that's put in front of them. Their shift of allegiance to V at the end becomes meaningless. It puts lie to the line, "People shouldn't fear their government. Government should fear their people." No, apparently government should fear a charismatic swashbuckler who can gain access to its broadcast facilities.
"But that makes them sheep, accepting of anything that's put in front of them."
No, because they express disbelief when the government lies on air.
Giving an unusual broadcast the benefit of the doubt (and thus not freaking out because something odd showed up on TV) is not the same as mindlessly believing everything that is broadcast.
I have a game I play with friends called, "The Movie is Never Wrong." We take all the bad parts of movies that don't make sense, have obvious plot holes, contain errors, or are executed badly and explain why, in fact, the movie is correct and therefore we, the audience, are simply stupid.
We sometimes do this with good movies of course, but what makes them good is that after analysis we find out that the "keys" are in the movie all along.
For inferior movies, the additions, new information, and commentary become more and more elaborate. We're simply making stuff up.
From the above thread it seems that Vendetta is in the slightly inferior mode. Plausible explanations can be found for the weaker dramatic moments, but everyone has different plausible explanations (the people are conditioned; the people are sheep).
Since the whole Pol Pot re-education torture camp is still there, I'm giving the movie a pass. The visuals look keen though.
"the 'bad guys', strangely, are less overtly evil"
I was speaking to a friend about the movie today, and he made the point that, if anything, the movie bad guys are more overtly evil, in that they engineered the murder of 100,000 civilians in order to gain power, rather than seizing the reins of government following a nuclear war. I thought it was an interesting point.
The Nordfire government of England in the comic set out on a deliberate extermination campaign against all non-whites, non-Christians, freethinkers, and gays. It's not clear that the government of the movie is quite that extreme--whether there is active extermination or "merely" incarceration, relocation, and incidental mass death.
In general, the fact that Gordon thought that he could get away with bucking the censors indicates that the government in the film is less repressive than that in the comic--maybe it's only as repressive, overall, as Syria now or as Brezhnev's USSR, not as bad as Stalinism in the 1930s.