A Very Hollywood Revolution

Rating: 6/10 (18 April 2006)

V for Vendetta begins with quite a spectacle: a mysterious masked man with a penchant for alliteration saves a young woman (Evey, played by Natalie Portman) from being raped by a gang of secret policemen. He whisks her to the rooftops of London to put on a show he has prepared. Suddenly, the street fills with the sound of the 1812 Overture and the Old Bailey explodes, with fireworks shooting up into the air.
Written by the Wachowski brothers and directed by their protégé and former assistant director James McTiegue, V for Vendetta is based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore and David Lloyd (although Moore has distanced himself from the film). In a near-future London, a fascist government led by Chancellor Adam Sutler (John Hurt) has arisen from the ashes of a War on Terror that has seen the USA collapse into civil war and disorder and Britain devastated by a mysterious biological warfare attack. Sutler's regime has a little bit of everything: the 'Big Brother' style surveillance that one can gradually see popping up in London today through CCTV cameras, a Fox News-style media outlet (complete with a British version of Bill O'Reilly), a strong dislike of gays and Muslims, and for good measure, the traditional icons of old-school Euro-fascism (big red and black flags, etc).
Pitted against the Government is V (Hugo Weaving), a vigilante in a Guy Fawkes mask who promises that in one year, his revolution will reach its climax as he completes Fawkes' original goal in 1605 by blowing up Parliament. The government immediately begins searching for V and his new accomplice Evey with an investigation headed up by a weary Scotland Yard chief inspector (Stephan Rea). As the police work to track down V, who is causing havoc all over the place, the inspector pieces together the puzzle: V is hunting down the staff of a concentration camp that seems to have disappeared from all government and military archives. As the clock ticks closer to Guy Fawkes day on the 5th of November, V's plans are set in motion as the police struggle to keep up.
There's a lot to like about V for Vendetta. Despite resorting to some obvious choices (the Chancellor appears only on a giant screen projected into a black, cavernous room and the regime's red and black crucifix-style symbol hangs everywhere), the movie looks stunning. And the performances from Weaving (masked the entire film), Portman and the supporting cast are all excellent.
Ultimately, V for Vendetta's problem is that it takes the easy road. It boldly claims to ask the question whether one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, but then robs the audience of a legitimate choice. V is not a terrorist. He doesn't terrorize anyone. Instead, he seems to deliberately avoid directly harming civilians at all. V attacks and kills the guilty: concentration camp governors, corrupt and deviant enforcers, brutal secret police officers. He seeks only for some kind of return of Britain's liberal democratic traditions. The government, on the other hand, seems to lack any support from the people (who swap over to V's side as soon as they see him), murders its citizens by the thousands and clamps down on all that is good in the world. Is there ever any doubt as to whether we should root for V? Or whether his methods are justified? V for Vendetta clearly wants to be more than an action movie. It wants to be an allegory about the War on Terror and the erosion of civil liberties that comes with it. It wants to be a shout of political frustration about the way the West is headed. It wants to be a macabre celebration of people power. But the whole thing seems too sanitized, too easy, too Hollywood. For a movie that tries so very hard to be controversial, it winds up being some of the best mainstream entertainment so far this year.