Impressive Indictment of Power

Rating: 10/10 (19 March 2006)

**note: I don't know why IMDb insists on misspelling-through-spell check Portman's character's name, but please try to ignore it.**
V for Vendetta is an important indictment of government power. File this one under Films That Matter.
After a brief introduction to Guy Fawkes' foiled attempt to destroy Parliament 400 years ago, the film, set in London in the near future, opens as Eve-y (Natalie Portman) is stopped by police for being on the streets after curfew. The film's masked antihero, V, saves her from being raped. After she later saves him from being killed by police, he protects her by hiding her. In so doing, he brings her into his world of revenge and revolution.
The film is as stylish as anything in the Wachowski Brothers' Matrix Trilogy, but with much stronger characters. Portman once again proves how phenomenal an actor she is. V for Vendetta is as much about her journey as it is V's revenge.
Whether it comes in the guise of shadowy manipulators, smirking simians, or charming rogues doesn't really matter. The power of the State is always arrayed against the liberty of the people. The last scene is hopeful, recalling as it does the fall of the Berlin Wall, where an impotent government finally crumbled before the will of a determined people. The people are powerful, and the most powerful thing they can do is to refuse to go along with the program.