By Scott Lipsig
I knew it.
I knew it, and you were all wrong.
“Oh, it’s a great movie. You’ll love it.”
Well, it isn’t, and I don’t.
It isn’t a side-splitter, a wit-laden political commentary or even a special effects showcase. It’s just another spoiled film, albeit one with a worthy cast.
V for Vendetta tracks V (Hugo Weaving), a Guy Fawkes mask-wearing terrorist who fights for the freedom of the English people, and Evey Hammond (Natalie Portman), a citizen in dystopian England. It’s worth a look for the acting, but little else.
The film, written and co-produced by the Wachowski Brothers (protege James McTeigue took directorial reins), is based on Alan Moore’s comic book serial of the same name. Aside from that, there are few commonalities.
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The character of Evey, originally a shaky, timid 16-year-old munitions worker turned prostitute, has somehow been turned into a mature, collected, self-confident corporate lackey. This alone makes the screen adaptation difficult to swallow, though Evey and Portman do share the same birth year.
The ridiculous adaptation for present-day America, including an implausible anti-American speech meant to play upon the nationalism of the viewer, is simply unnecessary, to say nothing of insulting. Of course, it also leaves one wondering what government employees of a British, anti-American state are doing using Dell flat screen monitors at work.
But then, there are reasons why Moore opted to disown the film.
“V for Vendetta,” Moore said in a 2006 MTV interview, “was specifically about things like fascism and anarchy. Those words, ‘fascism’ and ‘anarchy,’ occur nowhere in the film. It’s been turned into a Bush-era parable by people too timid to set a political satire in their own country.”
Later, he returns to the same line of discussion: “It’s a thwarted and frustrated and perhaps largely impotent American liberal fantasy of someone with American liberal values [standing up] against a state run by neo-conservatives - which is not what V for Vendetta was about.”
Even the character of V, while masterfully voiced by Weaving, reflects a watered-down, overly flashy version of a ruthless, methodical terrorist. When confronted by a group of police officers, he pauses to twirl his daggers before attacking. When demonstrating that he can, in fact, dodge bullets, he does so only after allowing himself to be hit multiple times.
And the screenplay introduces, of all things, a haphazard romantic subplot that is a disservice to the final product. I sincerely hope that the Wachowski Brothers were not trying to make this plausible.
But their hackery of a screenplay is not a total loss. In a strangely prescient scene, the film depicts hordes of masked people making a quiet, overwhelming display of force as the police stand by.
On February 10, a bunch of kids from the Internet got it right. Living up to the concepts Moore actually wrote about, the Internet-based group Anonymous - today’s poster child for anarchy - began peaceable demonstrations against the Church of Scientology, which have occurred in 100 cities worldwide.
Anonymous’ message, like V’s, has been simple and consistent: “Expect us.”
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