Originally published March 2016

V for Vendetta had always been a movie that I had intended to watch at some point but missed. I had managed to catch the finale on TV once, but without the context of the rest of the movie, it had little impact on me. For one reason or another, I never got around to watching it the whole way through until just recently. Surprisingly, it holds up relatively well for a decade-old film.

Many regard V for Vendetta as the last good movie of the Wachowski Siblings (the people behind the Matrix movies). Since most of their movies after The Matrix (Speed Racer, Cloud Atlas, Jupiter Ascending) received mixed or poor reviews, I have a feeling that the perception of V for Vendetta has probably changed a bit for those who liked it when it first came out, for better or worse. For me, however, it was a fresh new experience with minimal bias.

Pros

• Some good moments of dialogue (even if it's a little cheesy) with moments like the alliterated allegory announced affluently by V

• Action scenes are well-choreographed

• Good mystery thriller material to fill in the gaps

• Quality actors scattered throughout the film

• Hugo Weaving's voice work is fun and over-the-top

• Wears its politics on its sleeve without becoming too muddied by nonsensical premises like Snowpiercer

Cons

• Very 2000's style to film dates it a bit

• If you wanted to be critical of this movie for the number of clichés, cheesy moments, and familiar tropes, you'd have a bad time watching it

• A little too Matrix-y at times

• Movie is quite full of itself

• The mystery doesn't go into enough detail or focus

• Untouchable hero, until he wants to be vulnerable

• Not entirely memorable

Plot & Thoughts

V for Vendetta is a film that wants to inspire the public to remember that they have the power, not the government. It opens with a brief story about Guy Fawkes, a man from English history whom I honestly know very little about. According to the film, he tried to blow up Parliament in the 1600s as a symbol of revolution and power to the people. I have a feeling this bit of history was stretched and fictionalized a bit, but what do I know? Regardless, he didn't succeed, but his memory lives on in, V, a man who wears a mask modeled after Fawkes and who fights the authority in this dystopian future England that has become a police state under the rule of a Hitler-ish dictator played by John Hurt. Also, Natalie Portman is in this movie.

Portman's face is all over this movie and its box art, but her actual impact on the events of the film is less dramatic than those of V's. She still does things, but she's not the action star here. Using some basic logic, the filmmakers realized that we'd miss out on some of the emotional drama if the movie focused entirely on a man in a mask for the whole film, so we instead focused on the girl who knew him and had room for character growth. Portman's a good actor and does a decent job with the role. It's certainly nothing special in her extensive film portfolio, but she does show a range of emotions throughout V for Vendetta, and I never had trouble believing her performance.

When not following Portman's character, we spend a fair amount of time with that dude from The Crying Game who plays a detective who, for some reason, works almost directly under the dictator. He's a police captain, but he's a detective in the field? His character's role isn't realistic and it doesn't make sense to me, but it is what it is so that he can be an authoritative character that we latch onto because he's doing the right thing while he acts as a window into the corrupt upper layer of politics. In all the scenes where he's with the other henchmen of not-Hitler, there's a little underlying tension with the expectation that, while the villains discuss their plans, he might crack and show the rest of them he's not evil enough to hang with them.

And that's it. To tell you the truth, as each day passes since watching the film for the first time, I've slowly begun to forget everything, including character names. For all the style and flair they tried to pump into this thing, and for as important as V for Vendetta thinks it is, it's not that memorable to me. It could be that since the movie was trying to nail down its political views with the subtlety and intelligence of a sledgehammer, it has become less memorable because I didn't have to think as much while I watched it. Even though Snowpiercer had just as overt a stance on its politics, I certainly remember the moments in that movie more (even though I'd rather not) simply because I had to think so much about what was happening to make sense of any of it. V for Vendetta, though, didn't really ask me to think.

The mystery about V as a character doesn't involve the audience much and no great secret about him is really revealed. There's a twist with Portman's character, but it's relatively pointless and only serves her character's growth, which doesn't actually have much of an impact on the story or the message of the film. There's a mystery about how the government may have poisoned or attacked its people intentionally and how the villainous High Chancellor reached power through fear and manipulation of these events, but that's barely discussed.

I would have liked to have focused more on the conspiracy and how a politician could use those types of events to alter the perception of the people, which is perhaps the most important thing about this movie. Had V for Vendettafocused more on the conspiracy behind John Hurt's rise to power and had there been more written about how that all occurred other than a mysterious virus and a bought election, I think the movie's message would hold a little more weight and would apply even more so to the real, current events. Yet, all that is kept in the background in favor of focusing on its somewhat bland characters.

TL;DR(Conclusion)

V for Vendetta is an action movie that takes itself a little too seriously for the way it's trying to tell a story. It's not a bad film, by any means, and it still is certainly watchable, 10 years after its release, which is saying plenty. It's just a movie that wants to entertain, but hammer in its message over the course of its mildly forgettable 2 hours. The message, while nothing new, is certainly important, but it could be entirely summarized in Charlie Chaplain's speech from The Great Dictator, a far more timeless propaganda film that directly attacks the very real historical villain on whom V's villain is based.