Finally! A cause we can all embrace!

Rating: 1/10 (6 January 2010)

What this world needs is for people to just start blowing things up to create chaos that injures and kills thousands of non-combatants! Yipee! If this film is genius, then genius has fallen on hard times indeed. The fans of this film must also consider the authors of the 9/11 massacre geniuses as well. There are also several other annoying problems with this film: First, it invokes the example of Guy Fawkes from history as a basis for its agenda, but seems completely ignorant about who Fawkes was or why he did what he did. Fawkes was not an anarchist. He was a frustrated Roman Catholic who was attempting to disrupt the protestant regime of the Stuarts and reinstate Catholicism in 17th century England. He believed that Catholics were being persecuted under the protestants, but in actuality religious persecution had been greatly reduced from the terrors wrought by Mary Tudor (Bloody Mary) upon protestants. In any case, Fawkes attempt was a dismal failure, and the Stuarts and Parliament continued to rule. Eventually it was the protestant movement that elevated the democratic power of parliament over the Crown and instated the constitutional monarchy. The original poem "Remember" referred to in the film is actually a warning against Fawkes and his ilk, and a prayer of thanks for his failure and the continued peace of the nation and its king. I greatly respect Hugo Weaving as an actor, and I love Natalie Portman, but this film is downright ignorant, shallow, and dangerous; lionizing terrorism and anarchy.