V for Vendetta (2006)

V for Vendetta is a movie made blunt by the filmakers attempts to make relevant Moore’s sly, politicial work. While the book had a strong fascist, anarchist climate, the movie takes this away and replaces it with a world very similar to our own. The character of Evey has an actual job (shades of Neo from Matrix), the streets of London look bright and cheery and V mumbles his lines like a bad stage actor regurgitating a humourless script. Thus readers of the original comic get less than what they bargained for, even while those who are unfamiliar with the work marvel at how adept the storytelling is and how refined the unravelling of the plot. The movie struck me as yearning for a hopeful wrapup, one at tangents to the overall tone of both the film and especially the graphic novel.

I was personally saddened at the abandonment of the plot thread featuring the computer ’Fate’ and Chancellor Sutler’s ’infatuation’ with it. It was above all, the single theme in the graphic novel that was both ahead of its time and had an end effect that was as shocking as it was amusing. The direction of James McTeigue certainly wasn’t a standout and he existed simply to serve the narrative rather than the other way round. Even though the film had certain good, cinematic bits, none of them were cerebral or complex and it was a overall a let down because of the potential provided by such a richly layered and detailed source material.

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