I just saw this tonight. I'll post my thoughts later.

I find it interesting that this movie was placed in Sci-Fi and not Superheroes.

I saw it tonight after the screening we had for Opal Dream. I was getting down the wire in finishing up the book on the bus on the way to the screening, so when work was done, I stayed at the theater to catch the movie.

Eh.

It was a fairly okay adaptation. The first Act, however, was awful. It was grating, loud, poorly paced, and the music, cinematography and dialogue was overly bombastic and lacked any subtlety. It read like how Tim Burton would've done the material, and I was seriously tempted to leave, knowing that I had to make a conscious decision to get around around 2am.

It improved somewhat in the latter Acts, but it never rises above adequacy. Hugo Weaving makes V far too human compared to the book, wherein he is this enigmatic puzzle of a figure, whose dialogue is a tangled labrynth of complex puzzles, references and metaphors. There is plenty of that here too, but in the book, there was a barrier between him and Evey, and for that matter, the audience. The same necessity for him to remain an idea rather than a man is what required this. Everything, down to the blurry edges of his dialogue balloons, set him apart from humanity, making almost a spectre-like persona. Here, Weaving's gestures and matter-of-fact speech were just too familiar and down-to-earth. In any other character, this would be a plus, but here, he demystified him a bit. Hell, not only do we see his charred hands close up, but we see him wearing an apron? An APRON???!!! Uh-uh, no way, sorry, I don't think so. They largely brought down an enigmatic mystery man to the level of banal humor. I also question the wisdom of casting Weaving. We never see his face, so wouldn't it have made better sense to cast an unknown, or at least have Weaving uncredited? Hell, how about going the Darth Vader route, and casting an unknown in the Fawkes mask and costume, and maybe Weaving doing the voice, in order to reinforce the feeling of V being so much a man of illusion?

The complex social and political relationships among the men investigating V and their families was unsurprisingly left out, but I really did miss the references to the body metaphors for the government agencies (Eye, Ear, Nose, Mouth, Head), with the Finger being the only one left in, as well as the Fate computer, which could've been left in.

The action, of course, was pretty good, and it was nice seeing a V that was pretty much an exact replica of the comics, aside from some darker coloring in his costuming.

Spoiler Nit
I really wish they would've left in V's statement to Evey that he wanted a Viking funeral, so that it was clear what Evey did at the end of the movie was a fulfilment of that wish, and not her own idea. It would've reinforced how V had everything planned out, right down to not only his death, but also his "burial".

How did that little girl with the glasses survive getting shot? She gets shot by a Fingerman, which triggers the civil unrest, but on November 5, she is seen among the army of Fawkes. Wasn't she shot right through the back and chest? Even if she survived, would she really have been up and about by Guy Fawkes day?

A lot of dead people appear in the last montage. It's a symbolic representation of the survival of their spirit -- quite like the last scene in Places in the Heart.

I liked it. Quite a ride, and a fun one at that. As a movie, I'd say it is the best of the three I've seen based off of Moore's books. Not that the competition was that tough, though I did think "From Hell" was decent.

I thought that most of the performances were good. Natalie can really act, and her accent convinced me. I will admit, I'm not the best judge on that though, being that I don't spend much time around those who have them. I thought that Weaving did a spectacular job as V, but that may just be my love for Hugo. Most of the supporting cast also did fine work, though Hurt's character seemed a bit over the top. He was probably meant to be, but I found that a bit distracting. I also thought that the character of Creedy was a bit unrealistically evil.

That's probably my main criticism of the movie. The evil government is painted as the most black organization to the white of everything else. It makes V the unquestionable good guy, something I hear is not as cut and dry in the comic. It would have been nice to see a bit more grey in there. It seems that the only villain they make sympathetic at all Delia, so at least there's that.

Another area I felt a was a bit unnecessary was V's opening early monologue with seemingly every v word imaginable. We get it, his name's V. Don't need to smack us over the head with it.

All in all, it was a riveting, exciting movie that I would love to see again. During the day when movies are only around $4.

One more thing. I can see how some would think this movie is a bit political. The mention of recent events, Hurt's character was formerly a "religious conservative". Calling the movie a "liberal fantasy" (like one user at Yahoo did) is pushing it, though.

Luigi Novi: We never see his face, so wouldn't it have made better sense to cast an unknown, or at least have Weaving uncredited?
While not an unknown, Weaving is enough to work for me. I know I had to describe him as "Agent Smith" for anyone to know who I was talking about.

Luigi Novi: Hell, how about going the Darth Vader route, and casting an unknown in the Fawkes mask and costume, and maybe Weaving doing the voice, in order to reinforce the feeling of V being so much a man of illusion?
Unless they use someone who looks radically different than Weaving, would it make that much of a difference?

Naysayer: A lot of dead people appear in the last montage. It's a symbolic representation of the survival of their spirit -- quite like the last scene in Places in the Heart.
I was wondering about that. I'm pretty sure I spotted Gordon there, too.

JoshM: Unless they use someone who looks radically different than Weaving, would it make that much of a difference?
Luigi Novi: Read the portion of the book where Evey, after (Spoiler) V's death, is mulling over whether to remove his mask, and is pondering his prior statement to her that she must never know his face, and see how illustrator David Lloyd beautifully illustrated that sequence (though writer Alan Moore might've indicated the execution to him): We see her standing a few yards away from him, and in the next panel, we see his mask removed, with the face of what looks like a black man underneath. Then in the next panel, we see her again standing a good distance away from him, V's mask still on. Then in the next panel, we see him unmasked again, but it's an older Caucasian man with a somewhat gaunt face. Next panel: She's still standing a bit away from him. It's sad that this sequence, one of the most powerful in the entire book, was left out of the film, but its meaning is crystal clear: She never really took off his mask. Those men we saw underneath it were hypotheticals. The story was essentially saying, "Okay, what it's this guy? Or that guy? Happy now? Does it matter to you?" The point was that to know who V "really" was would diminish him as an idea, because as "V", he was so much larger and touched so many more people than the person under the mask. Obscuring the actor or actors who portrayed V would've, IMHO, helped reinforce this point.

Would it have mattered? Well, the producers of Scream decided to not let Roger Jackson, the guy who did the telephone voice of the killer, come into contact with any of the actors, like Neve Campbell, etc. in order to make them seem more scared of him. Obviously, they were going for a similar sensibility, and they didn't even show his face when E! spotlighted him on one of their 101 Most specials. Would it have made that much of a difference had they not done this? Well, maybe. I think it was a nice touch. I think it might've been a nice touch with V, since the point that aforementioned sequence conveyed is slightly harder to convey in a medium where the audience associates characters with specific actors. Just my two cents.

Is this the movie where the government is controled by lizard people?

Re:last comment
No, Norsefire....
(The original strip has a reference to Queen Zara, the daughter of the former Princess Anne & Mark Phillips. It seems therefore said lizard persons were stuck up against the wall & shot...!).
Incedentally, the mask sequence Luigi Novi describes, continues on the next page of the book, with the image of Evey's father appearing, then the image of a frightened Evey herself, at the time she first encountered V....

A few questions I had:

Wasn't there a swastika on a flag or something on the wall near Valerie's picture (in the Shadow Gallery)? What was the significance of that?

Why did Gordon think he could get away with his skit making fun of the chancellor? He should know better than anyone what the government does to dissenters.

What was so important that Evey had to visit Gordon after curfew and risk getting arrested, or worse? Maybe there was some dialogue explaining this, but I don't recall it.

I was actually almost expecting people to walk out during V's opening speech with all the "v" words. That was just silly. Of course, there were only four other people in the theater.

Wasn't there a swastika on a flag or something on the wall near Valerie's picture (in the Shadow Gallery)? What was the significance of that?

I think it was a political satire (i.e., the government is like the Nazis).

I really liked the movie... very gutsy. One thing I found amusing was that all of the TVs appeared to be JVCs. And the inspector's monitor in his office is a Dell! (Evidently the civil war in the "former United States" spared Dell.)

re:last comment
Josh, the Government is the "British Version" of the Nazi Government...
(Norsefire is a very thinly disguised version of the British National Party).
As for the Dell monitor reference, maybe there were a lot of surplus "Factory Clearance" Dell monitors, that were bought up dirt cheap, when the war started...
(I think more realistically, that Dell has a assembly plant somewhere in Southern Ireland, & hence might have been relatively unaffected by the U.S war...).

Does anyone know if theres going to be a two disc DVD of this in the UK

I recently purchased this vid. I like it quite a lot. Never having read the graphic novel its based on I cannot compare so it stands on its own legs.

As to the bombastic or unsubtle beginings that is the way it would have to do in the movies.And for me it works. Besides which getting to hear the 1812 while watching a building blow up with fireworks is always rather sweet. ;)

Anyhow it is definately one of my more favorite movies now. So always Remember, Remember the fifth of November.