j* movie reviews 2020

V For Vendetta (2005)

Still feels like the work of a disgruntled English teacher.

Not much has changed since I first reviewed this back in 2006, which was when it released in Australia. The opening sequence with the brilliant "V-word" monologue sets it up as a linguistically bombastic iconoclastic piece of near theatre... but then it gets kind of dulled. It feels like a bunch of standard English teachers got together and cobbled a story together that included all their favourite bits of all their favourite "classic books." So like you know, it's mostly 19-bloody-84 rehashed with a Zorro-like lead character.

In 2020 I did marvel somewhat at the parallels between V's story and Deadpool, both being experimental humans caught in a horrific fire and forced to wear masks and costumes to hide their hideousness. But Deadpool is funny as, and V is quite a bit too high-falutin' for my taste. I mean he's spent his time stealing (classically) great arts and books that have been banned by the Brave New World type government. And when he talks about class-war, you just can't help but feel he has very little idea about who the poor are... he seems to see this are a clever way to free paintings rather than a form of liberation. I just don't see V, nor Evey for that matter, as particularly prole-friendly.

It's a nicely stylised film, that's for sure, sort of maybe reminiscent of a less visually enthusiastic Sin City? Blade-ish, if Blade were all West End Musical? It still looks pretty fifteen years on. But there's just so much noise and colour signifying not much. It was a classic-literature take on terrorism, I guess, and felt "so hot right now" back in 2006; so daring to suggest in that immediately post-911 world that we, the public, could be terrorists. But now it's not so much, is it? Something that I felt really dated it was the dependence on television as communicator... now that we have our population equally being brainwashed online by big players like Russia, China, America and Pete Evans, the idea of the telly being king feels quite old hat (and that hat is still 1984).

It starts so well. Again, that long v-word speech is a glory to behold but nothing as dialogue-clever happens again. There are lots of highbrow characters coveting their highbrow works of art and porn (Stephen Fry I'm a looking at you). And the only prole-characters we meet (the girl with glasses et al) seem a bit like mindless dress ups.

It's not bad, but I was getting bored by the end.

J* gives it 3 stars.