"V for Vendetta" - A review by Alan Farrell

V for Vendetta.  Directed by James McTeague.  Written by the Wachovia Brothers (or something, same guys who did all the Matrices, so get ready for heavy—read incomprehensible—indictment of modernity, governmentitude, authoritariness.  “Based,” as they say in the movies, on a comic book by the same guy who did The League of Metrosexual Gentlemen, where Oscar Wilde is an action hero, Captain Nemo a fop, Tom Sawyer a gun-slinger, and Harriet Beecher Stowe (or one of them) a décolleté down to here vampiress… so you know we’re talking high art.  Starring Natalie Portman, who’s lucky to got pouty enough lips to make up for not having any hair most of the flick … annnnnnnd for not having any umph umphs, neither  …nor an umphety umph, poor thing, so if you were hoping for, like, spandex catsuit or shiny latex britches or at least a laced up to here leather jerkin, save your eight bucks; Hugo Weaving, who(m) you never see but who purrs sinisterly out from behind a Phantom-of-the-Opera mask; John Hurt, who hammers just a whisssssssssker too heavily on the Big Brother bit but who’s fetched up with  an appropriately virulent (like “serious,” only seriouser) case of the uglies; Stephen Rea, who(m) you never heard of but who’s about the only likeable presence in this joyless, humorless, and mostly senseless “animation” of a “graphic novel” (kinda like a comic book, except, you know, can leave it on the coffee table).

 

This thing is actually passing for grave and sententious among the (real) critics, the swing-for-the-bleachers guys like Ebert (or the other one if he’s dead), likely on account of it’s not as worser as it oughta be, given the track record of pretentiosity of the Warshofskys.  We do get a break in that for once it’s not the dumbo Americans poisoning the life of (hu)mankind with their flockin’ greenhouse gasses (or not, if those are actually the good things) , but the Brits …kinda past masters of that, though, if you wanna ask the Irish, the Indians (the rupee, suttee, thuggee kind), the Zulus, the Papists, British sailors, (especially the cute ones), and great-grampa who settled in Jamestown) since somebody has—ooopsy daisy—uncorked one of those virusulent (!) viral death virussesseses (Latin plural in six –s, as we know, or one –i …if it’s a month with a –r in it) that has taken us dumbos out of the picture.  And lucky thing, too, on account of it’s got nasty (and shadowy) in maundy Old England where a ruthless fascist Chancellor (Hitler’s title, of course:  and a swastika does pop up in the film), pregnantly named “Adam” (Brits once had a Prime minister named “Eden.”  Sooooooo…) and who somehow has managed to lose control of a eugenics experiment in the “facility” of  Invercargill (no, wait… that’s the place in New Zealand where Burt Munro comes from. Well, some British-sounding place, then:  Flurbengill, Blatheringill, Muffingill…) and a. kill 80,000 (none of whose relatives seems to be interested in vengeance) then b. burn up to cinders and beyond recognition but not (quite) kill one of the inmates, who calls himself thereafter V (for vengeance) and adopts the identity of tormented, drawn-and-quartered “patriot” Guy Fawkes (variously spelt, actually Guido Fauci, a Papist agent, so V is really…  wait for it…  for  vendetta!), who on the unhappy Fifth of November 16-ought-something tries unhappily to blow up Parliament (variously spelt), who now gets celebrated (sort of) every Fifth of November, and who’s apparently preserved to posterity in a (maybe the) contemporary portrait wearing one of those sillyass Mark Maguire beards and a smirk, hence the ceramic mask of a guy with a sillyass Mark Maguire beard and smirk that V sports throughout the movie:

 

                                                Remember, remember

                                                The Fifth of November

                                                The Gunpowder Treason and Plot.

                                                I see no reason

                                                Why Gunpowder Treason

                                                Should ever be forgot.

 

            In the course of his business (blowing up the Old Bailey, London house of “justice”), V stumbles across nubile and pouty spunkatrix, Evie (“Adam”? “Eden”? “Evie”?  Whap!  Sorry I had to do that.  You had one of those looks… again), in the throes (throws) of a rape.  V saves her but in that saving compromises her and has to snatch her out of the clutches of the Chancellor’s vicious thought police.  Bummer, though:  she’ll have to hide in V’s mansion for a year until next Guy Fawkes Day, when V intends to complete the symbolic act his namesake failed to:  blow up Parliament, now—as then, evidently—a warren of weenies, waffles, and wattles (like waffles, only European).  Will V unmask?  Will plodding Inspector Finch (Rae, a decent bureaucrat, worm of integrity gnawing the vitals of a corrupt… no, that’s not gonna work.  A decent bureaucrat, gnawing the vital worm of…  no.  A decent worm, corrupting the gnawed vitals of…  Aw, man…) unearth the Truth?  Will V pull off his monstrous act of vengeance?  Will the threads of half-dozen different subplots ravel and tangle and snarl?  Will we get any skin out of Evie?  The Chancellor’s last name is “Sutler,” but fact is that if V for Vendetta got much “su(b)tler,” it’d wind up as convoluted and preposterous as Matrix.

 

                                                Burn a guy to toast and get a

                                                Recipe for  dark vendetta.

                                                Gunpowder? Treason?  Maybe not:

                                                See if you can find a Plot!

Alan Farrell

Comments

[Norbert Schulz]

Well, if you see it like you read a comic book the film's quite enjoyable, but yes, the second half is thoroughly of the 'oh dear' sort.
Natalie Portman replayed her role from Star Wars. Hugo Weaving was basically Agent Smith from the Matrix again. Besides, Stephen Rea is known in Europe.

I didn't consider my money wasted, though a great movie is something else.

[patrick]

watched V for Vendetta recently, loved it... eye-candy effects, amazing how much character they developed into a mask

[Pirate Laddie]

Kinda liked it, your review as well. Something like this could be done on our side of the pond with damaged Affie & Iraq vets (Affie especially, since that's a particularly nasty sandbox) going after the critters who sold the war to a depressingly gullible populace. Seeing a bunch of war criminals (corporate, political, media) in suits fleeing justice at the hands of the folks they blithely treated as kleenex (on a good day) might have a salubrious effect -- won't know 'til we try it.
Such a film might be a good idea, too.

[turcopolier]

PL

I see that you go for the c__p that combat veterans are "damaged." Mr. Jefferson and I reject the idea that you have to be damaged to see the need for revolt. pl

[Medicine Man]

Ok now you're freaking me out, Mr Farrell. Granted, I did try to bait you into commenting but even so that was quick.

Fair criticism of the movie in question though. It does have the feel of being an extended author filibuster, doesn't it? More of a message delivery system than a story; though well enough done imo. I'm told this isn't an accident. The author of the comic book source material is half an anarchist (Allen Moore). Also claims to be a wizard; I kid you not. Or maybe that's Grant Morrison I'm thinking of? No, wait, they both are occultists. Now I'm freaking myself out.

To square the circle on my rambling, much of the ideas behind The Matrix was supposedly inspired by Grant Morrison's comic the Invisibles. Maybe this is a habit for the Wachowski Brothers?

[TR Stone]

Loved the movie.

[Pirate Laddie]

We're all damaged goods. Hollywood (your friend & mine) would find it difficult to characterize such a story line in any other way. Look at how the media played the Abu Ghraib disaster and the string of unexplained attacks on "singing, dancing native peoples" by elements of the US military in Affie, including the most recent one-man (?) death squad.
Surely if the evil can't be traced to individuals, we'd be forced to consider the possibility.... no, no, let's not go there, we don't need to reflect upon whether a little rebellion is a good thing, or the types fertilizer best suited to certain trees, do we?

[Basilisk]

a warren of weenies, waffles, and wattles (like waffles, only European) and WANKERS, don't forget the wankers, where would the British (?Intelligence?) Community be without them?

Brother Farrell, another tour de force, that is some kind of furrin' car, isn't it?

I'm waiting for the review of Troll Hunter.

[Babak Makkinejad]

There was a war movie touching on "damaged veterans".

The character played by John Wayne insisted to the female writer that she has got it wrong and that no veteran is so damaged as not to be able to get it on with a woman.

[Charles I]

It was pretty hokey a bit thick, our hero a bit of a pontificating prat. I put it on when I wanted an action cartoon and I enjoyed what I got even as a I cringed a couple few times. It had more plot, albeit many plotholes,than an episode of Transformers.

[Charles I]

What about The Best Years of Our Lives, William Wylers's 1946 3 hanky movie? 3 guys come home, including Homer the handless who does his best to drive his sweetie away, whole thing recalls the picture of the marine getting married. Never mind John Wayne just watch Harold Russel play Homer and try not to sqirm. Happy ending tho.

[toto]

You know how they say the book is often better than the movie? This Alan Moore guy is pretty much the caricature of it. Every one of his books had about a hundred times the depth and breadth of the respective movie (V for Vendetta, The league of extraordinary gentlemen, but also From Hell and Watchmen).

"Graphic novel" is usually a pompous way to refer to what is just a silly comic book, but in the case of Alan Moore's books the term is thoroughly justified. Strongly recommended and don't let the movies fool you.

(Also: not a word for Stephen Fry? I liked his bit in the movie)

[Babak Makkinejad]

Yes, that was a good movie.

[Praxis]

TL;DR

Get back to me when you can be bothered to put down the crayons and write full sentences and paragraphs like an adult.

[Nightsticker]

Colonel Lang,

Just for fun.
I don't watch many movies
but 3 I liked were:

V for Vendetta
Blade Runner
Ride with the Devil

Nightsticker
USMC 65-72
FBI 72-96

[Account Deleted]

That was a pointless exercise in film review. Despite the blase nature of his "can't be bothered attitude" it might have helped if he actually got some of his references correct. Axe to grind much?

[Jim Ticehurst]

"Ax the Grind" ? "Pointless Excercise in Film Review"..? You don't know Alan do You..? He has such great and Humerous Ways of "Maintaining the Status Quo.."..His Movie revies are "Purple Prose From a Black Room.."

One of my greaty Joys is reading Alans Reviews..

Perhaps you should read his Books..and other writing here..at SST..Its avaiable on Pats list of "Categories" on the Right ..

If You really want to know the MAN, Read his Bio..or His Book.."Expended Casings" about His Special Forces service in Viet Nam..

General Farrell..Doctor of French Farrell..Professor Farrell..
has no Ax to Grind..He is one of the few who knows how the Cow Shit got on the Roof..and writes a humor Review about it..

Carry On Alan.."Under the Colors"

[Tyler]

Enjoyed the movie but the homosexual charecter railing against Christian tyranny while praising the Quran (among other things) was a bit telling that there's a bunch of leftist hypocrisy lurking below the surface.

[Tyler]

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was an excellent graphic novel. The addition of Tom Sawyer to 'appeal' to American audiences was telling that the movie was going to be a dissapointment.

[Tyler]

AFAIK The Matrix's original concept was developed by a black woman and then the Brothers adapted the ideas of a consensus reality and good freedom fighters versus the tyranny of order from a pen and paper role playing game.