Holy crap!

I want you to go back in time. Dust off the ol' Delorean and just pop back in time, like, two years. Then, all thought of temporal paradoxes and the continued wellbeing of the universe aside, I want you to find yourself and talk about movies. Then tell yourself that the creative duo behind one of the most successful (and annoyingly disappointing) movie trilogies of all time, along with the producer of such deeply philosophical masterpieces as The Last Boy Scout, Exit Wounds and the haunting Assassins, would produce a brave (for it's time) and socially important (when you think about it) film. You'd have to tell yourself that it'll still be a slam-bang action with plenty of blood and a few spent cartridge cases, I mean they're just experimenting, they haven't had personality transplants, but the basic fact remains that the film I'm talking about is not your usual high-budget fare.

As you've probably worked out, in case you've been living in a bubble, I'm talking about V for Vendetta and this movie suprised me like few movies have. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't expecting Chicken Park with zany masks, but I was figuring I'd be in for a fun, flashy and entertaining evening more Daredevil than Sin City. I was not expecting the subject matter to be so potentially-controversial (and why hasn't there been a bigger stink? Have the conservative wowsers taken the month off? Or have they become self-aware enough to figure that complaining about and trying to get banned a film that features a fascistic conservative government that heavily censors the arts is a tad incriminating? But I digress...). A sympathetic terrorist? Destruction of historically-significant buildings as a legitimate form of protest? What were they thinking?

I know the storyline comes from an Alan Moore-penned (and you can tell. Two attempted rapes in the one film on the same character. God knows how many were in the original graphic novel) and (mostly)David Lloyd-drawn graphic novel from the same name, but too easily the themes could've been dumbed-down and watered-down. I know there are comic purists out there who are yelling at me now, saying "they did dumb it down! They did water it down!" but from where I was sitting it wasnae so dumb and it certainly wasnae watery.

Basic premise? Well, my snide poke at the knee-jerk complainers against film sort of summed it up. The England of the future - once more the major global power - is run by a fascistic conservative government. Stop laughing at the pure unlikelihood of it all and pay attention. No gays. No foreigners and the legacy of 80,000 dead from a biological attack to drive the fear. Then along comes this masked terrorist asking people to "remember, remember the 5th of November". He “kidnaps” a young woman, after having saved her from attempted rape (gosh, what a surprise) by officers of the nasty government. There is, of course, more to it, but I want you to go out and see this film because it is very, very good and no fuss has been made about just how good it is. Sorry, no media fuss. Most of the people I know who’ve seen it have raved. And now I have too. I haven't been as pleasantly surprised by a film since Sin City, so "I was expecting a fun film, but Jesus that was good!" knocked out of my chair was I.

Hugo Weaving squeezes every nuance of performance from the blank, kinda creepy mask and Natalie Portman is great as the young woman whom he “adopts” (with a most impressive, though not entirely flawless, Pommy accent). I’m rabbiting on a bit now, so I’ll just say – again – go and see this movie before it disappears from the screen. It’ll be okay on the telly, but the climax needs to be huge.

Four and a half forbidden jukeboxes out of five.