V for Virtue

Rating: 8/10 (18 August 2006)

I went into "V for Vendetta" skeptically. All of my friends had raved about it, said it touched on all the hot political issues of today. I was worried this would be another shallow adolescent fantasy masquerading as deep and artful  a comic book future so dark and gloomy it couldn't but be compared to "1984." Oh, "V for Vendetta" reeks of adolescent fantasy, and packs on the Orwellian clichés in the hammiest of ways, but it is not superficial, and it is not dumb. And, best of all  and despite a daunting running time of two hours and twelve minutes  it was solidly entertaining.
"V for Vendetta" has its sloppy moments, of course. Natalie Portman is mostly flat and touts an equally flat English accent; in one scene, her character makes a betrayal and escape with little apparent motivation. Her TV show host friend has an episode of his show lampooning the totalitarian state's dictator. He's punished, of course, but in this vision of the future, is it really probable that it would even be allowed to be aired? Another lapse in common sense is V's apparent singularity in his fight against the corrupt government. There is so little about how he single-handedly plans his offensives or gathers the materials necessary, despite heavy (though not overwhelming) exposition of his background. However, the film does not need to be logical on that level, so it does not try, and it is so entertaining and fantastical, that the audience would neither notice nor care.
The charm of this movie is that the action and adventure is not firmly rooted in the modern comic book epics and Tarrantino-esquire pulp fiction. Instead, the film is more indebted to the old romantic fantasies of Alexandre Dumas, or at least the swashbuckling movie adventurers of the thirties that he inspired. (V's favorite film is "The Count of Monte Cristo" and he prefers sword over gun.) Our hero is always masked in a musketeer's costume (attributed to a seventeenth century dissident who tried to blow up parliament), and always speaks with hyperbolic literacy and enunciation. Hugo Weaving plays the part with just enough hamminess and old-fashioned romance. Hammy, too, are the bad guys. And the film is innocent enough to still show the evil chancellor's head on a gigantic screen overlooking his tiny henchmen  in clear defiance of "Austin Powers" spoofing.
"V for Vendetta"'s selling point, however, is its 'controversial' politicking, and, to my surprise, the agit-prop ploy worked. The Wachowskis' script has filled the film to the brim with obvious parallels to today's world, but the obviousness is simple, pure and un-clandestine. Furthermore, it does not ring false. Fortunately or not, today's volatile situation seems to fit into the film's "1984" fantasy like hand in glove. When boiled to their essences, the problems of today are so insidious that they're believable as the troubles in this fairy tale world of good versus evil, and the movie knows that we know that it's a mass oversimplification, so it retains its swashbuckling charm, and never tries to outsmart us, or crash and burn in a futile attempt to become 'sophisticated.' Even though a bleeding-heart subplot of lesbian lovers seems tacked on, and there's a jail sequence that becomes ridiculously improbable, the movie can be forgiven because the filmmakers seem so naïvely earnest, and move the film along at a brisk, engaging pace. It's refreshing to see a movie that is so firm in its convictions that it would even condone 'terrorism' as a means of getting to freedom and fraternity. This is probably the most radical mainstream hit since the pre-9/11 "Fight Club," though this film is not as crafty or offensive as "Fight Club" was in some instances.
"V for Vendetta" is straight, simple, fun, silly, commercial entertainment that becomes an unlikely countercultural classic; it has the guts to call its audience to stand up to tyranny, even if it's not abroad. Though set in Britain, "V for Vendetta" has perhaps the most unabashedly American spirit ever to find its way into an American blockbuster.