No one escapes their past. No one escapes judgment.
I passed on the film version of V for Vendetta when it was released in 2006 because I figured if Alan Moore, the writer of the original graphic novel, had asked to have his name removed from the credits, then he must have had a damned good reason for doing so. Consequently, it irked me when the commercials and trailers said that it was "from the creators of the Matrix trilogy," which was true insofar as the Wachowski Brothers produced the film and wrote the screenplay, but there would be no V for Vendetta the film without V for Vendetta the graphic novel, which Moore created with artist David Lloyd as a rebuke of '80s Thatcherite England. Still, with Zack Snyder's adaptation of Watchmen just around the corner, I figured Guy Fawkes Day would be the perfect day to catch up with it.
I read the graphic novel many years ago, so I can't enumerate all the changes the Wachowski Brothers made to the story, but for the most part the broad strokes are there. Natalie Portman plays Evey, subject of a totalitarian England who falls under the influence of vindictive terrorist V (Hugo Weaving), who sets about instigating a regime change using somewhat morally questionable methods. Then again, the oppressive government of the high chancellor (John Hurt, whose casting can't help but bring to mind his oppressed Winston Smith in the film version of 1984) isn't the sort that would allow people to do so through more peaceful means. The film also features Stephen Rea as the police inspector engaged in two parallel investigations, both trying to track down V and unearth the connections between his victims, and Stephen Fry as a television comedian whose satire is a bit too subversive for the powers that be. And instead of The Matrix's ubiquitous bullet-time, this film includes a fight sequence with something I can only describe as dagger-time. It's the kind of thing that looks cool, but was probably unnecessary in the grand scheme of things. With a film like this, the emphasis should be on the ideas, not how cool things look blowing up.