V for Vendetta

V for Vendetta (2005)

HBO Broadcast, Seattle, WA

October 03, 2007

** / ****

While a treatise on the dangers of accelerated surveillance and security measures in the near future is certainly a ripe and interesting topic, James McTeigue’s attempt, V for Vendetta is a freakin’ mess. All gets quite silly quite quickly as the film almost immediately collapses into an excuse to blow stuff up real good and engage its masked marauder in well-lit, slow-mo, hand-to-hand combat rather than fill us with fodder for philosophical discourse. Seriously, who ordered the chatty terrorist, I mean hero, with the creepy Guy Fawkes mask and the penchant for classic swashbuckling? Not me, especially when his purpose is little more than to sell Halloween costumes and serve as part of an exercise in stylish risk over otherwise odd, messy, and very average movie mechanics. And so the story goes…

In the near future, after facing a handful of biological attacks fear of further terrorist effort has caused Great Britain to transform into a police state. With curfews, surveillance, and a Big Brother-like dictator patrolling street side jumbotrons and in-home televisions like a Wizard of Oz talking head, the citizens of London are at the mercy of their own fear and the oppressive state. Seizing the opportunity to make change is a masked vigilante going by the name V (Hugo Weaving, excellent as always). Covered head to toe in black, wielding an array of pointy weaponry, and topped with a funny looking mask, V is bent on vengeance against the state. Utilizing the old British Guy Fawkes holiday as his engine for revolution V blows up some buildings and then promises even worse come the next November 5. Between then and now V befriends a pretty young lady (Natalie Portman), traps her in his underground lair (Dr. Evil jokes aside!), and puts her through a series of tests, some planned, others not, to prove her allegiance. A plethora of unending explanations about government conspiracies, shut-down hospitals, and V’s own back story follow until November 5^th arrives once again and well, you can guess the rest.

The first thing that came to mind when watching V is that writers the Wachowski brothers have some neat ideas but definitely need to be reigned in. After the success of their awesome The Matrix the wheels spun off and their subsequent films were bogged down in excessive mythology, gratuitous action scenes, and characters explaining, explaining, explaining nearly every detailed facet of their overcomplicated plots. V likewise suffers from these syndromes and is especially weak around the ¾ mark as the Wachowskis stuff a wholly unnecessary lesbian angle into the proceedings for no reason other than their fetishistic desires craved one. Remove this tangent as well clean up some of the film’s numerous speeches on what’s going on and you’ve still got a film that is missing philosophical pop. However, the film would also be much more entertaining and engaging than the cluttered mess that currently passes as the final cut.

With actors this good (Stephen Rea and Stephen Fry are exceptional) embodying interesting characters, clever visuals running rampant, and the bucks to do as you please it is a shame a potentially great film turns out average. No matter, Waichowski fanboys will gleefully lap up V for Vendetta as they obediently proclaim, “thank you sir, may I have another.” Too bad all these second and third helpings pale in comparison to The Matrix, the best of the Waichowski efforts by a land slide.