V for Vendetta: Movie, DVD, HD DVD Review (2006)

9/02/2007 Posted by Admin

Smooth criminal

(Originally published 2006)

The cautionary new thriller "V for Vendetta," finds director James McTeigue envisioning some rather difficult times ahead for the year 2020.

Within 14 years, England will be a totalitarian state ruled by the vicious dictator, Chancellor Sutler (John Hurt, bad teeth consuming the screen), the United States will be ruined by the global war it ignited, and on the streets of London will be a mass murderer in a Guy Fawkes mask who goes by the name V.

Played with swift, literate ease by Hugo Weaving of "The Matrix" movies, V has a personal vendetta against Sutler and his regime that is deadly. Like Fawkes himself, who died by hanging in 1605 when it was revealed that he planned to blow up Parliament, V plans to do the job himself to capture the world's attention with his own point, as destroying famous buildings tends to do.

The film, which the Wachowski brothers adapted from Alan Moore's graphic novel, is at its core a pop-culture confection, dipping freely and liberally into a scattershot of influences to compose its whole.

Throughout are clear echoes of "Batman," "Zorro," "The Count of Monte Cristo," "The Phantom of the Opera," and "Metropolis" (check each film's ending), as well as flashes of George Orwell, Shakespeare, Orson Welles and H.G. Wells.

Noir factors into almost every corner of the story and its production, but then so do elements of science fiction and the Western. Adding to the fright factor is that V physically looks and moves as if he's one step removed from Michael Jackson, though after some minor surgical tweaking that went amusingly awry. In some shots, their resemblance is uncanny. And a little creepy.

But I digress.

Really, this overly wordy movie is about romanticizing a terrorist and turning him into a hero. Since these days that's about as dicey as playing with chickens in Turkey, it's probably best to put it into the perspective the movie intends.

The terrorist in question is fighting a fascist government that has done unspeakable things to its citizens--homosexuals and women are scourged, murdered and loathed, creative thought is crushed, art is abolished, freedom is a lost dream. Under Sutler's dystopian rule, people live in a pacifistic state of fear that prevents them from rising up against him and his henchmen.

Sound familiar? Oh, the present-day echoes abound, reverberating off the screen and railing through the theater. Complicating matters is Evey Hammond (Natalie Portman), the fearsome naif who V saves one night from certain rape by government cops and then converts (rather brutally) into his fearless sympathizer.

Much of the story focuses on her religious awakening under V's guidance, but McTeigue also trains his eye on Finch (Stephen Rea), the chief inspector charged with finding V and shutting him down before it's too late. Each is excellent in this dense, beautifully shot movie designed to break audiences from their own complacency and get them talking. What they discuss and how they feel about the subject matter are beside the point. Like V, McTeigue and the Wachowskis have composed a stage that allows for the exchange of thought and the value of ideas.

Unlike V--and this is the crucial irony the movie presents, the one fact that demands attention--they use the art of moviemaking to sell their message, not violence and certainly not terrorism.

Grade: B+

(Also available on HD DVD)