A Spot-On Movie for our Time

Rating: 8/10 (3 August 2006)

Though the packaging of both the theatrical release and the DVD suggest that V FOR VENDETTA is yet another action hero comic book foray, nothing could be further from fact. James McTeigue has directed this Wachowski Brothers adaptation of Alan Moore's comic book into a story that is intelligent, frightening, spectacularly produced and acted and the result is a fable for our minds to consider.
Swooping out of the time in England in 1605 for some background as to the mission of our hero, V (Hugo Weaving) appears as a masked grinning man who uses terrorist tactics to take down a British government as corrupt as any one might imagine. The time is 2020 and England rules in a totalitarian manner, its greatest enemy, the United States, has self destructed, and the government controls the lives and thoughts of the British citizenry. One remnant of the government's destructive forces is a beautiful girl Evey (Natalie Portman) who rapidly becomes V's apprentice/accomplice in the fight against the corrupt powers. The police (Stephen Rea and Rupert Graves) work to capture V and Evey, thinking they are terrorists out to destroy the government. But the heads of state (John Hurt et al) fanatically attempt to brainwash the populace through the television madness of a talk show host. Gradually the horrors of the current regime are revealed and it is a case of the good guys versus the bad guys with Portman and Weaving towering in importance by the end of the film. The quality of acting form this fine cast (including such actors as Stephen Fry among many others) is first class, making the potential silliness of the story dissolve into horror.
Well crafted films such as this serve the public well: sometimes it takes a visual depiction of the 'comic book look' of government officials to make us more sensitized to the direction we could be taking. It is an entertaining, fine movie - but it is more importantly a red flag warning we should all be heeding! Grady Harp