V For Vendetta

Natalie Portman and Hugo Weaving star in V for Vendetta, a film largely saved by Weaving's vigour.

Herald rating: * * *

Alan Moore's dense and peculiarly British graphic novels have already made for some unfortunate films.

V for Vendetta, a sort of Orwellian anti-Thatcher anarchist-punk take on the Guy Fawkes legend which Moore started in 1983, is certainly a cut above its predecessors - From Hell and the awful League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

It's largely faithful though awkwardly modernised adaptation was guided by the Wachowski brothers, who wrote for Marvel comics before they became The Matrix guys, and it's directed by James McTeigue, their assistant director on the trilogy.

But though it's a solid transfer of the graphic novel's ideas and shadowy style - even if Moore refused to have his name associated it with it - it's just not much of a movie.

Nor is it in any way as provocative as any film should be where the lead character, V, is a permanently masked man whose idea of revolution is blowing up various London landmarks in pyrotechnic style. That's in between doing away with various pillars of the British establishment.

It's now set in 2020. Moore's original extrapolation of Thatcherism-to-fascism gets a thick coating of various early 21st century terrors in an attempt to give it some contemporary resonance.

You can almost tick off the references - the allusions to to Abu Ghraib, terror attacks on the subway, avian flu, television channels complicit in supporting a right-wing regime.

But little of V for Vendetta's political undercurrent is coherent. And the totalitarian government headed by John Hurt's Chancellor - in what's a poetic bit of casting, as he played Winston Smith in 1984 - are drawn in broad strokes of red and black. Gee, they must be Nazis huh? So our guy in the mask is definitely a freedom fighter rather than a terrorist. Glad they cleared that up.

But there's still something oddly engaging about V for Vendetta. Part of it is its sheer talkiness - for a supposed action film - as well as its oddball Britishness (quite aside from its supporting cast, at one point it unleashes The Benny Hill theme).

As Evey, the young woman V takes in, Natalie Portman is impressive. But although her London vowels are fine, something doesn't quite ring true about her character - she's meant to have lost her parents to that evil government, but she seems less peeved about it than fellow orphan Harry Potter.

What's more, while Evey was a prostitute in the original novel, here she has a job in television - and her troubles all start when she heads off on a date with her boss.

Yes, if George Orwell had written Bridget Jones's Diary instead, this is how it might have looked.

But the star of the show is Hugo Weaving.

He gets way too much of Moore's original alliterative verse in his dialogue than is strictly called for.

But from behind the mask he brings to V a vitality, a verve, and a vigour, that much of the rest of the film lacks.

CAST: Natalie Portman, Hugo Weaving, Stephen Rea, Stephen Fry, John Hurt
DIRECTOR: James McTeigue
RATING: R13 (violence, offensive language, sexual references)
RUNNING TIME: 133 mins
SCREENING: Village Hoyts, Berkeley