 V
For Vendetta
Starring:
NATALIE PORTMAN, HUGO WEAVING, STEPHEN REA, STEPHEN FRY
and JOHN HURT
Directed
by: JAMES McTEIGUE
Screenplay by: THE WACHOWSKI BROTHERS
Based on the Graphic
Novel Illustrated by: David Lloyd
Bluntly
speaking? V for Vendetta is T for Terrible. With so much potential
- given V's extraordinary budget to let imaginations fly, a very timely interesting
premise and a strong talented female lead who could actually handle brainy super-hero
stufamagol - this could have been another sci-fi masterpiece, but it aint. No
siree Bob, it tis sadly not. It tries… Story
goes…it's the near future. The world is run by a horrid one-thought government.
Any civil liberties are gone. America is gone as an entity as war has stripped
her of her title. England is the hub of the new brave world order, whose Nazi
colored tones and controlling intruding watching immediately have you ill at ease.
One
of the cities citizens is a mild mannered gal named Evey (Natalie Portman). She's
an orphan. Her parents, we will learn, were political upstarts and 86'd long ago
in mysterious circumstances at a concentration camp disguised as a quarantine
hospital.
Meanwhile…way back in merry old England of yesteryear,
a would be hero named Guy Fawkes set out to blow up parliament as a rebel making
a statement about church and state being all-too-controlling. He was on track
but alas, Fawkes was stopped - gunpowder aplenty in hand - and hung. England still
has a holiday of sorts - where bon fires blaze and folks run about - on November
5th of each year celebrating the little guy who tried to make a difference.
Shoot back to our today in the film… Evey
is not supposed to go out, the city of London has a strict curfew. She does and
is violently accosted by the new government police-like thugs who are anything
but judicious. But before they can fully make you ill, a masked man slices the
lot down. And spares her the trauma. The
masked man, known as V (Hugo Weaving) is a man who is tired of the corrupt new
way of things and is setting out to remind folks of their rights. He is the modern
day Guy Fawkes - and his mask is a Guy Fawkes mask. Evey
and V ultimately become united in the battle to free the world from its state. Again,
the premise is very good. The piece just kind of needed some more soul and a little
less jumping all around to fill-us-in as swiftly as possible - thusly managing
only to annoy with the half bits and disattached snippets of "the-why."
The back-stories are convoluted, and the new chancellor (John Hurt) is totalitarian
toad whose spitting maniacal power rants are obviously those of a lunatic - yet
all blindly follow. We know something happened, but what? The bits we are supplied,
via flask backs, confuse. If you're familiar with the DC brand comic book maybe
you're ahead of the point. We others were not. And the forced love story, especially
here, was simply a laugh-a-minute. Hey Hollywood a guy and a girl can work together
to save the world and not have to become romantic…and don't tell me it is
in the graphic novel, 'cause obviously a heckofa lot more detail was corrupted
to "make it work on film."
Snack
recommendation: Egg in toast with marmalade.
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