Remember, remember...

Finally caught V FOR VENDETTA last night, and was damned impressed. I probably would've liked it even better if I had never read the comics, but that's more a case of me playing "Hey! They changed that!" than any actual weakness in the adaptation.


Overall, I thought it was a very successful transition from page to screen. I could've done without all the high-tech effects during the knife fight at the end, but I'm guessing that was just residue from the last MATRIX movie. What impressed me was how much of the comic they kept -- Evey's capture and torture, the whole "Valerie" sequence, the scene with the bishop and Evey in little-girl garb (though I did miss the poisoned communion wafer), even the girl with the glasses who says "Bollocks!" and spray paints the V on the STRENGTH THROUGH UNITY poster.

Sure, several subplots were dropped, the ending was changed and the backstory was different, but I'm not one of those nerds who whines when the script for a HARRY POTTER movie isn't the book verbatim. It's a different medium kids -- what works in one won't always work in the other. And this movie worked very well.

Spoilers ahead, so if you haven't seen the movie (or read the comic), beware:

* The key sequence of the entire story (book or comic) worked beautifully: Evey's capture, imprisonment, torture and moment of clarity. I knew what was coming, but I was still hanging onto every word of Valerie's story and the interrogator's offer to free Evey if she gave up V. It stuck close to the comic, right down to her line "I'd rather die behind the chemical sheds" and the mannequin in the hallway. I wonder how many people who didn't read the comic were surprised by the revelation. I recognized Hugo Weaving's voice, but if you weren't listening for it, you probably wouldn't. And, in the scene in the Shadow Gallery and on the rooftop that followed, Natalie Portman proved that, if she's not saddled with awful STAR WARS dialogue, she actually can act. That particular scene is one of my favorites in all of comics, and I wasn't disappointed by the live action version.

* Stephen Rea was perfectly cast as Finch, the honest, compassionate cop working for a dishonest, heartless government. His trip to Larkhill wasn't quite as bizarre as the comic version, with a well-timed acid trip and visions of rags on barbed wire becoming human torsos, but he played the character well -- you were rooting for him all the time to make the leap, to do the right thing. When he met V (in disguise) near the end, it felt right that V said he was waiting for him the entire time. In the comic, he's the one that kills V, but it made sense for him to have the chance to stop Evey from blowing up Parliament -- and not take it. (One thing about that train scene though -- at the end, when the explosives-laden train pulled out of the station, why didn't that last domino fall? Or did it fall during the explosion? Or does it matter?)

* Which brings us to the ending, which I thought was just right -- thrilling, powerful, inspirational and fitting for what came before. The sight of all those V-masked people marching through London was a stunner, but even better were the quiet scenes before that of the TVs that went unwatched, the living rooms and old age homes that were suddenly empty. I appreciated how the movie showed the discontent of the ordinary citizens, from families to barflies to old folks. Another one of my favorite scenes in the comic is where the crowd riots against the cop as V says (in narration) "Our masters have not heard the people's voice for generations, Evey...and it is much, much louder than they care to remember." We didn't get that exact moment, but the crowd beating the cop who shot the "bollocks" girl was close enough. And the final shots -- clearly meant to be symbolic -- where the people removed the masks and we saw the families, old folks and barflies we'd been touching base with earlier in the movie, then we saw the girl, and Dietrich, and Valerie, and Evey's parents ... that was a nice touch.

* I kept expecting (and hoping) that we'd get the final words from V, where he tells Evey that "You must discover whose face lies behind this mask, but you must never know my face," which leads to her considering all the possiblities, then realize that anyone -- no matter who V really is -- will be less than the idea of V, which, of course leads her to realize whose face will be behind the mask -- her own. But in the movie, Evey didn't need to take up his identity. She took up his mission, and the rest of England took up his identity. Then shed it and reclaimed their own.