One Of The Best So Far

Rating: 10/10 (18 March 2006)

After 2005's discontinued success with big,clunky action movies, I was afraid for V for Vendetta, The Wachowski Brothers bundle of love. Yet, I was fortunate to watch the movie yesterday, and this is a first, but it is the first SMART action/adventure movie and for that reason, this movie in itself is a revolution in a revolution.
The movie brilliantly opens with Natalie Portman's exuberant and calming voice of the tragic poem that is of Guy Fawkes, a man who tried to blow up Parliament and was eventually executed. Throughout the movie, the first lines of "Remember, Remember, the fifth of November," rambled in my head. The movie creates a world in where America has gone communist and apparently, is in the open fire of a civil war. Britain has become a totalitarian state with a vicious chancellor by the name of Sutler (Played notoriously by John Hurt). The world has been protected from wars and viruses and such for some time, as the government makes sure the people are put in their houses at a curfew and do not do anything drastic. Enter Evey Hammond, who meets V, a terrorist with the mask of Guy Fawkes on throughout the movie.
V's performance is one of the most tragic, comedic and substantial roles I've seen in the past decade, and he's under a mask. The mask is one of the most prolific symbols in the film, as even though Hugo Weaving is speaking, the mask moves with his words. It's smiling at a comedic moment, it's grimacing while he is thinking and it is hiding the facade of emotions that is V when he is emotional. Weaving's mask work is one of the best and should be noted as a high point for me in the film.
The movie creates a world that we've thought to have been dead. Any movie that is able to create a controversy WITHIN the film always receives top honors, and the movie does just that. The criticism it has received for it's political references are so irrelevant to this film that it's near funny as hell. The Wachowski's have decided to mock reviewers in their attempts to find some parallel with politics of today, as every movie in 2005 tried to do just that. V For Vendetta is the most symbolic movie I've seen in the new millennium, bringing up topics we are too afraid to watch. Evey and V's romance though, is something the Wachowski's to have wanted to be fronted in the movie.
There are no flaws with the movie, except maybe the ambition meter was pushed a little too far. But then again, "it is the only thing celluloid has to offer", as V says.
Grade: A-