Film Review
‘Vendetta’: Action Letdown, but
Makes Daring Statements

By Olivia Farrow (March 23, 2006)

If Hugo Weaving was willing to wear a goofy clown mask and Natalie Portman was OK with people shaving her head for V for Vendetta, it must be pretty good, right? It was written by the Wachowski brothers, the Matrix guys, and the trailers have a boat load of explosions…so isn’t it good?

If a big ol’ Hollywood blockbuster with bombs, a macho superhero with arms sculpted from God dust, and a clear cut protagonist versus antagonist plot is what you were expecting from “V,” then your preconceived notions are wrong. Unlike the The Matrix, “V” is much more of an ethics film. Not to say the Matrix didn’t have its philosophical conversations from time to time, but “V” concentrates on human concepts of murder, conscience, and corruption, not “there is no spoon” ponderings.

It all starts with Guy Fawkes, a terrorist who in the 1600’s attempted to blow up Parliament in London. Hugo Weaving stars as a man who intends to finish Fawkes’s job. And lest you forget his subversive intentions, he makes sure to accessorize his Zorro-style outfit with a mask bearing Guy Fawkes’s visage.

It’s now 2020. The former United States of America has screwed itself over by getting entangled in too many wars and burning up too much energy. We don’t know anything else about the rest of the world, but London has been turned into a fascist organization worshiping High Chancellor Adam Sutler. It’s anti everything; anti-homosexual, anti-Muslim, anti-civil disobediance. There’s a curfew at 11, not only for teens, but for everyone. Butter is embargoed. The Picasso painting Guernica has been blacklisted.

Not only does V want to blow away a building, but he also wants to purge England of all of its corruption. However, this so-called corruption remains somewhat of an enigma for the viewer. Some would say that it was the Supreme Chancellor, a Mao-type of totalitarianism. Others could say that it was every possible thing that was wrong with the country. Mad scientists, Old Bailey, corrupt priests, you name it, V will blow it up with relish.

Things get complicated, however, when V saves a woman from corrupt cops after she breaks curfew. Evey, played by Natalie Portman, accompanies V to a fireworks show- blowing up Old Bailey. After a listen to the 1812 overture and a quick anarchist chat, Evey skips on home. The response to the explosions displays how corrupt the country is with its media. The government puts up a filter of lies to feed the media in efforts to cover up any possible uprising or threat to the government, and the public is kept in the dark about V. That is until V sticks up the emergency broadcast channel and invites everyone to join him in his revolution to fight against the government, which will be topped off with a couple of hundred nice, fat bombs to go off in Parliament in one year.

Once V’s speech is done, the real trick is to get out of the building that has now been surrounded by cops. V isn’t Neo; he can’t stop bullets and save his girlfriends from certain death. All he has is his bulletproof mask, a Kevlar vest, and his urge for vengeance. That’s what I liked about V, for while the plot could have easily made him a guy with laser vision and widow makers, it just supplied him a nice set of knifes. V isn’t exactly a hero, either, which brings up the aspect of ethics in the movie that I found to be very interesting. V and Evey, develop their sense of justified and unjustified murder throughout the story from the trials they forgo, and the audience members makes their own decisions about what they think is warranted as we learn what happened to V and what the government has done to its people.

There were some aspects of the movie that I saw as a blatant slap to the right wing, but I had to learn to forget U.S. politics during the movie. At certain points I knew that the writers were only making theoretical hypotheses to make even more of a statement, but the plot twists and turns will really give your brain an ethical workout because it’s so daring. Natalie Portman, except for the slightly annoying accent, was far better in this movie than in other ones I’ve seen her in and her transformation from a withdrawn peon into a fearless skinhead terrorist was fairly conceivable. Hugo Weaving kicked as much butt as his character did in the acting department, and overall his antagonism of the government kept me glued to my seat instead of my soda. “Vendetta” may be a little bit of an action letdown, but its daring statements will definitely provide fodder for discussion long after the credits set to “Street Fighting Man” end.