Remember, remember

V for Vendetta (2006)

After completing the matrix trilogy the Wachowski brothers penned this adaptation starting Natalie Portman, Hugo Weaving and Stephen Rea. Britain is in the grips of a fascist regime while one terrorists stands against the government.

Adapting works from one medium to another can be a contentious subject and no one more than Alan Moore, the writer of the original comic, is aware of this. The original comic looked at the British political landscape of the 1980s and the clash between authoritarianism and anarchy while the plot of the film has been changed to be more of an allegory of American politics following the war on terror. It is easy to see Moore's point of view that his work has been twisted to be something different and ultimately I do not think it was for the better.

As a stand alone piece of entertainment this is a decent film, it raises some interesting questions but unfortunately it does fall short. One of the main causalities in the transition to film was the much larger moral ambiguity applied to both sides in the comic and this does make the film a little more unbalanced. We also have the “eggy in a basket” problem, something which was very British centric has become slightly confused in it's Americanisation. I am also not sure the back story works coherently either thanks to the changes that have been made. In the end this is a decent film that could have been so much better.

3/5 entertaining and disappointing in equal measures.