V For Vendetta

I just got back from seeing “V for Vendetta.” I know, I know, frivolous frivolous.  Shouldn’t I be grading?  Well, yes, but I am now getting ready to grade, so the day still will be productive, so there.  Now that I think about it, productive may be a bit ambitious, but it’s best that I not think to hard about that lest I become sad.

The movie!  I should first say that I’m getting rid of the X out of ten review system.  I’ve never really liked how it makes certain movies ‘equal’ when they ain’t.

As I’ve mentioned about other movies, I was pretty well-disposed to this one before I went in the cinema, so there wasn’t much chance that I’d not like it.  So, big surprise – I liked it.  I liked it quite a bit.

There aren’t many blow-em-up movies with genuinely thoughtful ideas, and, while there are some over-wrought speeches, the film pushes its ideas across with minimum vocal soap-boxing.  The points it does push well – generally around the theme of ‘the slide to authoritarianism comes from fear’ come through clearly though.  I imagine that much of this depth of story is probably due to the background of the comic book (graphic novel?) from which the film is drawn, but I haven’t read them, so I couldn’t say.

The world, a fascist Britain, is very convincing, and they’ve gone to great pains to weave familiar points into the story.  It’s easy to recognize the talking head ideologues in the films ‘Voice of London.’  Stephen Fry (who I still think of as the guy in the old Black Adder show) comes through as a mash-up of Graham Norton and Benny Hill – complete with sped up tape of a chase sequence to that Benny Hill tune.  That the Voice of London is a drugged up egotist shouldn’t seem that far from our world, but his vitriol is simply take a few steps forward.  Fry’s character is similarly pushed a bit beyond, but is still very recognizable.  

Another wonderful problem is central to the ambivalence that a lot of folks seem to be feeling about the movie.  ‘V’ is branded a terrorist, and it’s hard to argue that he’s not one.  He assassinates, spreads chaos, and well, terrorizes, and yet we are led to sympathize with him.  The movie does depict gruesome, bloody death, but only that of evil men and their henchmen.  The henchmen are often ‘Fingermen,’ the film’s version of brownshirts, as in the opening scene when the lead is saved from being raped by them, but they’re also occasionally just cops.  That which he attacks is undeniably evil, so are his bombings and killings excused?  

I hope that people who take a blind faith point of view toward our current situation go see this movie.  I hope that they are drawn in to the film because they think Natalie Portman is hot, or because they liked Batman.   And I hope they think a little about the story.

All that bather said, it’s a very entertaining movie.  The filming is done quite nicely.  The expressions of a motionless Guy Fawkes are captured well through angles and lighting.  The acting is generally good – certainly above par for an action movie, which is, after all, what category this film will fill.  The fight-scenes are handled well in a suitably comic-bookish way, but without too much over-the-top super-heroics.  

So without recourse to an X/10 system, I’ll just say I highly recommend this movie.  And anyway, Natalie Portman is hot.