The Americans must be fairly baffled by James McTeague’s film. Chances are they don’t have a clue what happened during the Gunpowder Plot and that we celebrate burning effigies of Guy Fawkes every November up and down the land. So it’s rather a surprise that it was picked up by writers/producers, the Wachowski brothers (responsible for The Matrix trilogy). They must have had their work cut out for them.

The graphic art book writer, Alan Moore and illustrator, David Lloyd’s story is set in a fascist Britain of the future under the iron fist of Chancellor Sutler (John Hurt, who starred in 1984).  Then on November 4, along comes V (Hugo Weaving), a masked knife-wielding bomber wearing a Guy Fawkes mask who saves young TV company worker, Evey (Natalie Portman) from rape and then blows up the Old Bailey for good measure, aiming to rally the public into toppling the government over the following year.

McTeague’s movie poses an interesting question about what Britain could be like under a fascist government, but there isn’t really a good enough explanation about why Sutler is allowed to take over or that the public are particularly afraid of him. London is portrayed as a very gloomy place whether in daylight or darkness and one wonders whether this is how we are seen by the Americans. 

The acting is strong enough to carry the film over it’s two hours twelve minutes running time (with interesting performances from Weaving, Hurt, Rea as a party-doubting policeman and Stephen Fry as Evey’s boss); but the picture overall lacks the spectacular staging that one expects from the Wachowskis and one wonders why they didn’t try to set it in Washington instead. Having never read the original book, this reviewer is left speculating what they were trying to achieve and can understand why Alan Moore didn’t want to be associated with it.

(3½/5)

Release Date: 17 March 2006