Late one night in the streets of London in a futuristic landscape of totalitarian Britain, Evey is rescued from some men by a mysterious masked man only known as V. Later on when Evey is at her work, V is taking over all broadcasting to deliver a message and urges the people of England to rise up against the governments tyranny and oppression. The police thinks Evey is V's ally and goes after her as well. This time Evey saves V but gets knocked out in the process and V takes her back to his place. There she finds out a little more about the mysterious man, but soon leaves him to go on with her life. She hides at a friends house who later is killed by the government and so she is captured. From then on she learns to understand V more and even also understand who she really is and what she think is important. This all makes her think alike with V, and so she becomes his ally and helps him in his cause to bring freedom and justice back to the society.
V for Vendetta is one of those movies I've been waiting to see for what feels like forever. So when I finally got to see it, naturally the expectations were quite high to say the least, but fortunately the movie lived up to those expectations. Haven't read the V for Vendetta from DC comics, I can't compare it to that so I don't know if that would've made a big difference or not. All I can say is that I had only read a little bit about the actual movie before seeing it, and it felt like the less you know the better.
While this being a political movie with a message and a plot worthy to think about, you don't need to have any kind of political interest to be able to enjoy this flick. There will of course be a ton of people trying to analyze V for Vendetta and will try to find a deeper meaning within it etc. Also a lot of reviews out there seems to have focused on the political aspect on the movie, so I won't go into further detail regarding anything political from here on as there are a heap of other places if you want to read about that type of stuff.
While this not being a horror movie, I thought I should review it anyway since I think it will appeal to a lot of horror fans out there. There are really cool action sequences in the movie that contains some fine blood splatter. There are also fantasy elements baked in and add to that the comic book feel, and also that a part of it belongs to the thriller genre. So you don't have to have any political interest whatsoever to be able to enjoy this flick as it has so many different things to offer. With that being said, let's move on.
V for Vendetta was written by The Wachowski Brothers who also wrote and directed The Matrix and the sequels. Now as we all probably can agree on, the sequels were completely awful, but personally I didn't even like the first movie. Sure it had nice special effects and all that but that does not make a good movie, to be honest I thought it was crap and I would never watch it again even if I got paid. The reason I'm saying this is because there are a lot of people who seemed to be interested in V for Vendetta since they were big fans of The Matrix. I don't think it matters if you liked the Matrix or not, V for Vendetta is a totally different experience, and while I didn't like The Matrix I found myself to think that V for Vendetta was an awesome movie.
It's easy to pick a favourite character here and that is V, he's a determined man who stands up for what is good and just but never so he feels "too much" so to speak. He his a hero, but a good and likable hero and not one of those heros that act so good it almost makes you sick if you know what I mean. V is the perfect character, and when he fights people he does not bother to spare their lives, he's not that kind of hero who does that and that of course makes him come out even better. Personally I hate all these sissy heros that are just too good for their own good, and that's why I really enjoyed V for Vendetta, and it was exactly the same thing with Sin City.
Another character that is really interesting as well is Evey, excellently portayed by Natalie Portman. I knew that she is a good actress, but when I started to watch V for Vendetta, I had the utterly crappy new Star Wars movies in mind since she was in them, but luckily I soon got rid of them and that whole feeling. I guess she was ok in Star Wars, it's just that those movies blew so much that in the end you couldn't find a single good thing in them since the overall experience just wanted to make you vomit in rage. Anyway, the character development with Evey is fantastic and truly interesting to watch as she has to go through a lot of stuff and changes more and more the further the movie goes. But I don't wanna spoil it for those who haven't seen V for Vendetta yet so I'm gonna stop here.
One thing about movies that takes place in a certain period of time usually have a certain feeling to them, whether it's in the historical past, the present or the future. V for Vendetta is set in a futuristic Britain so things are of course modern, but at the same time it deals with revolution and everything surrounding it and that gives it an older feel. Also some of the type of clothes worn in the movie also makes this feeling of the historical past of England more genuine and stronger, but at the same time you know that it takes place in the future. It's a funny thing and makes the movie very different, and sure adds a lot of atmosphere to the whole thing.
There are not too many action sequences, and I found myself at first thinking that there should've been more. But when I thought about it later on again, I figured that there was just enough to satisfy. Thing is that the action sequences are so brutally good so in one way you want more, but on the other hand it's a good thing that they are far between one another, because when you finally get to see one, it's so worth the wait. If there would've been more, they would probably not've been as effective. Once again, it's nothing like The Matrix, it's much better and has more feeling to it and is just not stylish action, even though it is stylish as hell.
I don't wanna go too deep into the plot or what happens in the movie, it just needs to be seen without knowing too much. Like I said before, you can see this as a thinkable movie and get into the politics of it all, or you can just enjoy it on the more entertaining level, because it sure is entertaining. In the beginning I was a little afraid that there would be too much to take in as it sure seemed like it with the massive dialogue and all, but that's not the case. Sure, there are a lot of thinkable things and you can sure make it hard for yourself if you go in analyzing and whatever, but in the end it was just enough and it's easy to follow and a true joy to watch. Movies like this doesn't come along often enough so if you haven't seen it yet, do yourself a favor and go see it. You'll have a good time.
V for Vendetta was interesting for real and with that I mean that everything in it was genuinely interesting, not just one character, the story, the camer-work, but everything. It's an awesome movie that is thinkable and that does not have an either too sweet or tasteless ending. It's just a perfect balance of everything, with great characters, great acting, directing, score and story. Truly recommended.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE:
MOVIE YEAR: 2005
DIRECTOR: James McTeigue
WRITING CREDITS: Andy Wachowski, Larry Wachowski
GENRE: Sci-Fi, Thriller, Action, Drama
CAST: Natalie Portman, Hugo Weaving, Stephen Rea
COUNTRY: USA, Germany
RUNTIME: 132 min
RATING: 9/10
V for Vendetta Website/IMDB Click here
V for Vendetta Trailer Click here
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