Customer Reviews
Oh dear, oh dear... - By: N. P. J. Garland, 25 Sep 2008 
As a massive fan of the original Alan Moore/ David Lloyd graphic novel, I had my misgivings about this film from the start. It took about 10 minutes for my fears to be realised, & worse. The opening action sequence sees the eponymous hero, V, kill several policemen (or "Fingermen"), as in the comic, but in the most comical, camp action sequence imagineable. Straight afterwards, V decides to introduce himself with a hysterical speech filled with V words. Not good.
A few minutes later, one of the key elements of the graphic novel was also horribly, foolishly bastardised. V's speech went from a brilliant metaphor to being, well... an uninspired speech, which, in summary, said: "Yes, fascism= bad. Me= good."
From this point, the film continued to tear apart Moore's masterpiece. The entire idea of V being an anarchist was abandoned, as was much of the character's moral ambiguity, in favour of cringe-worthy camp & ill-advised sentimentality.
Natalie Portman was about 10 years too old for the female protagonist, Evey Hammond, & had the most ridiculous "working class" British accent I've ever heard. I can't imagine what she thinks working class Londoners sound like, but they certainly don't sound like her.
Indeed, one of the worst elements of the film was the complete inability by the Wachowskis to comprehend that the graphic novel, & film indeed, are set in Britain. Therefore, it might strike you as unwise that two foreign actors were cast as the two BRITISH protagonists. Indeed, the most prominent Brits in the film were John Hurt, as Adam "Sutler", & Stephen Fry, as Gordon Dietrich.
For those who have not read the graphic novel, Hurt's character has been changed from a complex, sympathetic, weak man (who's insidious actions you could almost understand), into a raving, manic Hitler clone. Indeed, the Wachowskis went so far as to rename the character Adam "Sutler" (Susan, in the original) & give him the title of Chancellor, just to spell out that he was, indeed, a fascist.
As for Fry's character, Gordon Dietrich, his character never even appeared in the comic, & was brought in entirely unnecessarily, replacing another character callled Gordon, & filling that character's role very, very loosely. Indeed, Fry's role was so insignificant it was painful, & a comedy sketch that the character takes part in at one point in the film was cringe-worthy, taking away any sense of tension or drama in the most appallling fashion.
Finallly, I will complain about the ending, while trying not to spoil everything. Suffice to say, the ending was changed drasticallly. Not exactly the obvious events, but the ending in the graphic novel has much more impact, & is much more fitting for such a dark piece of work.
I could go on for hours more about how this film bastardised a masterpiece, & how it is a woeful mix of the melodramatic & the positively ludicrous. However, I'll end it here. Instead of wasting your money on the DVD, splash out on the graphic novel. You'll be much more rewarded, I assure you.
Really more of a 3.5 - By: Marlyly, 18 Aug 2008 
There are good aspects to this film. And then there are bad. The good includes the story (set in the future where the government controls the population, removing privelidges such as freedom, food, opposition), the twists & turns in the plot, the filming (its spectacular to the eyes if nothing else), & certain characters & actors playing those roles (Stephen Fry, for example). However, the first 30 minutes of this film, though full of action, failed to grip me (maybe there should have been an explanation at the start about what was going on exactly), Natalie Portman's acting failed to convince me (and I'm a fan of hers usuallly!), the love story between the two main characters was bizarre, & sometimes it becomes rather difficult to work out exactly what is going on. It's a good film, but had the potential to be so much better. Hope they may do a re-make in 20 years or so that would be worthy of a 5 star rating.
Pretty dire - By: A. I. Mackenzie, 13 Aug 2008 This is definitely a case of too many cooks...
Hardly anyone escapes with their reputation intact.
It's hard to know where to start with this film, nothing feels quite cooked. The plot makes no sense, the dialogue is pretentious & ridiculous & the acting varies wildly.
To be fair Hugo Weaving does his best, but locked behind a mask he's largely wasted. Natalie Portman is game but her accent slips alll over the place & she's required to betray & assist V randomly to suit the plot, there isn't reallly a consistent character there for her to get hold of.
The Wachowskis should hang their heads in shame, they've added to the dreadful Alan Moore movie canon. The action seems seem beamed in from another movie (specificallly the Matrix), & the twists & ending are unconvincing & poorly staged.
As mentioned in other reviews the two Stephens (Rea & Fry) get away from this mess with their credibility intact.
Avoid! What on earth will Watchmen be like?
something lost in translation? - By: least toughest in the infants, 04 Aug 2008 OK, cards on the table: I am a big admirer of the original comic. I think my disappointment comes not from some crazy notion that to mess with even one word of the book is HERESY, but rather that the transition from one form to another has done no favours.
It was always going to be a battle to make it work - the film clocks in at 2 hours & even then great swaths of plot are absent, whole plots/sub plots in some cases. I don't mind that, but the sadness for me was the end-affect on the character of 'V'who, in the book at least, is a very beguiling & ambiguous individual. Simply, not enough of his 'story' & the events he creates in the book, made it through unscathed onto the screen.
I also had some trouble with the re-arrangement of people/events - most of alll V's TV 'lecture' which is a central point midway in the book but here gets short-shrift right at the start. The other thing that I felt was missing - the emphasis on V & the technology he hi-jacks: I wondered what people seeing the film but not having read the book would think.
What I can say with certainty is that: if you liked the film & thought there's was some sort of larger thinking under it alll - you are right. But you'll have to go to Alan Moore's original book to find it. He didn't think the book could be made into a film, which is reason why you don't see his name anywhere on it...
Definitely worth a look though - visuallly they got it spot on in many instances.
view from a distance? - By: Dr. Vernon M. Hewitt, 21 Jun 2008 I enjoyed this film, I enjoyed the moral ambiguity at the centre of the character V, & I enjoyed the absurdity that many here found irritating. Cliched imagery works because they are cliches - obvious symbols known & (too readily?) understood - but the film works only at a distance: it probably would not merit re-watching, and, as many reviewers have shown here, it doesn't submit well to scrutiny.
It offers a colourful & entertaining warning to the logic of tyranny, but is neither convincing or plausible about the content: fascism of the 1930s European kind in the UK is a notoriously difficult to visualise, partly because it failed even in the circumstances of the 1930s. Slightly outside the cacotopia genre, more convincing portrayals are the surreal movie BRAZIL, which depicts British authoritarianism as an over blown & (still) incompetent bureaucracy, replete with sporting metaphors & shopping mallls, again with terrorism at its heart, So too, in a different way the TV series A Very British Coup. But BRAZIL was a commercial failure on release, & A COUP was hardly sci-fi, being basicalllt an attack on the British establishment.
The difficulty with main stream sci-fi is that the politics has to be reduced to very crude sign posts or flashbacks - or as in V footage of riots, people in pubs & families on sofas. GATTICA and, to some extent, EQUILIBRIUM are slightly more successful in depicting the context of a totalitarian system, but V DOES try hard to show the banality of evil, & the sense that, superficiallly at least, it might look rather similar to what we have now.
Much of the imagery here is clever but not seemingly thought through. I was confused (as many reviewers were) by the reference to Guye Fawkes. Only a catholic & a recussant would have seen the attempt to blow up Parliament in 1605 as the triumph of an `idea' worth emulating - many saw Fawkes as indeed as a foreigner working to subvert the English way of life. Perhaps, like V's treatment of Porter, this is a deliberate attempt by the film to confuse its moral purpose - certainly the final stages of the film are impressive & symbolic indeed - but strikingly ambiguous. I was also bothered by the mass grave scenes, partly because they needed more careful placement. I do not object to the referencing of the holocaust, & to an image that returned to Europe as recently as the 1990s in the Balkans, but I wanted to know the moral shortcut that led scientists to do that in more detail - fear does make us complicit in our own terror, but can it by itself strip us of humanity so quickly? Is it so skin deep?
(PS anyone reading this might help me out with a question: the BBC produced in the late 1970s or 1980s a TV drama about a fascist British state - any clues as to what it was callled?)
