Style without substance

Rating: 1/10 (29 May 2006)

It seems appropriate that the 1812 overture is part of the soundtrack for this movie: Tchaikovsky might dazzle for a short while, but you wouldn't want to listen to it for over two hours.
Even those who have not yet seen the movie, probably know that the Wachowski brothers have jumped on the anti-Bush bandwagon. The political message is not too blatant, but knowing about it helps to understand the symbolism.
The movie is set in a future dystopian Britain (confusingly called "England": perhaps Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland have become independent?). There is a second civil war in the USA, and "England" has fallen under a dictatorship with Christian theocratic overtones. By the look of the regime logo, the official religion seems to be Eastern Orthodoxy.
For some reason, the title character thinks that blowing up the Old Bailey and the Houses of Parliament would help to restore the rule of law and democracy. He styles himself after Guy Fawkes, a Catholic terrorist who tried to blow up Parliament with everybody inside.
Actually, the entire script appears to be written in blissful ignorance of the real world. For example, the dictatorship bans the Koran. What are the reactions of the 1.6 million Muslims in Britain? the movie does not acknowledge that they even exist. Another example: the movie opens with a British televangelist saying that America has fallen because it is more Godless than Britain.
The internal logic of the movie world is just as shaky. The regime is only nominally Christian, so why does it waste police resources in persecuting apolitical homosexuals? and why does it impose a late-night curfew?
It gets worse. One might think that an American civil war would generate enough fear to sustain a few dozen dictatorships, but the British regime fakes a few terrorist attacks for good measure. This conspiracy looks useless twice over when it transpires that people do not believe in the regime propaganda.
On the other hand, people immediately believe the first TV broadcast from a masked man who speaks against the government without offering any evidence whatsoever. This is what I call the "Running Man" plot device: an anti-government video is shown on prime time TV, and popular opinion is immediately turned around. It is becoming a popular plot device.
One might also wonder why V prefers knifes to guns, or how he manages to live in style in the very center of London, but this is nitpicking.
There is a pretense that the plot devised by V is very clever. To support this idea, we are shown how very clever he is with falling dominoes. In practice, the entire scheme devised by V can be reduced to the following:
BEGIN SPOILERS: The regime Security Chief has been plotting to murder the Dictator and take his place; V asks the Security Chief to carry out the execution in front of him; the Chief obliges (for reasons known only to him); finally, V kills the Security Chief. Incidentally, this is the only significant action scene, and it is poorly choreographed: the Chief's bodyguards stand like mannequins, waiting for their throats to be cut. END SPOILERS
This is not much of a plot, so it had to be padded with a revenge sub-plot, some prison scenes, and some explosions.
In summary, this movie has two confused and illogical plots (the movie plot and V's own plot) which show no knowledge of the real world; and no points of interest other than a character with a cool costume. If you want to see what life might be like under a modern theocracy, see The Handmaid's Tale: it has a low-budget look, but what do you expect in a theocracy? If you want a well-told dark story with a masked super-hero, see Batman Begins. And if you want exciting sci-fi action with a decent plot, see Terminator 2: Judgment Day.