V FOR VENDETTA
(three and a half stars)
Provocative thriller lets viewers judge Bloody good show.
Running time: 133 minutes.
Rated R (violence, profanity). At the Empire, the 64th and Second, the Lincoln Square IMAX, others.
JUST when we were ready to give up mainstream movies as braindead,along comes the controversial and gleefully
subversive “V for Vendetta,” a piece of corporate-sponsored art that will have audiences rooting for a bomb-throwing anarchist.
Loosely adapted by Larry and Andy Wachowski (“The Matrix “)from an ’80s graphic novel by Alan Moore,and stylishly directed by the Wachowski ‘s longtime assistant director James McTeigue,this is a thoughtful and highly
entertaining conflation of “The Phantom of the Opera ” and “1984 ” that draws on many other pop culture sources.
The futuristic setting is Britain in about 2020, where a totalitarian regime that rules through fear of terrorist attacks has
carted off gays,Muslims and political dissidents to internment camps for medical experiments.
V is an at least half-mad escapee from one of the camps.He was hideously burned in an explosion and hides behind a plastic mask with the ironically smiling visage of Guy Fawkes,a Catholic dissident who unsuccessfully tried to
blow up Parliament in 1605.
After blowing up Old Bailey,our knife-wielding, Shakespeare-quoting hero hacks into the state-run TV network to vow he will succeed where Fawkes failed,in a year ‘s time.
V ‘s somewhat reluctant accomplice – at least at first – is Evey,,a gopher at the network who is rescued from an attack by government goons by V and taken to his lair filled with looted “subversive ” art.
Much to the film ‘s credit, and to the exasperation of its critics,the audience is left to decide for itself whether V is a terrorist, freedom fighter, vengeance-seeking psychotic,or maybe all three simultaneously – and whether his extreme
actions are a justifiable response to government repression.
This pretty heady stuff for a big-budget comic-book movie,and McTeigue pulls it off with the help of a superlative cast.
Though his face is hidden behind a mask,Hugo Weaving (Agent Smith of “The Matrix ” movies)) makes V a romantic, sympathetic and stirring character.
Natalie Portman is an excellent Evey – her head is shaved in one intentionally disturbing sequence – who solidly
portrays her character ‘s politicization,even though her British accent wavers. The Hitler-like Chancellor who rules the U.K.is most effectively played by John Hurt Winston Smith of the ’80s version of “1984 “),who appears mostly as a “Big Brother “-like TV image. Another unlikely performer for an event movie is Stephen Rea (“The Crying Game “)as a rumpled police detective tracking V and Evey who comes to question his government ‘s motives. And Stephen Fry is superb as a closeted gay TV personality (with a Koran and Mapplethorpe prints in his closet)who helps Evey and signs his own death warrant when he ditches a censored script to poke fun at the Chancellor in a
hilarious cross between “The Great Dictator ” and “Laugh-In.”
“V for Vendetta ” was scheduled to open last November,to coincide with the 400th anniversary of Guy Fawkes ‘ arrest,,but was postponed,presumably because of parallels between the film to last spring ‘s attacks on the
London Underground.
Credit the Wachowski ‘s clout in the wake of the “Matrix ” success,,but Warner Bros.has allowed them to update Moore ‘s graphic novel with pointed contemporary references, including a United States that has collapsed in the
wake of the Iraq invasion – and a bullying,xenophobic TV host who is clearly modeled on today ‘s cable television.
Though it raises some important questions and is unusually talky for a big action movie,the fast-moving “V for Vendetta “subordinates its political lecture to an entertaining piece of pulp fiction.