V for Vendetta

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"Remember, remember the fifth of November,
Gunpowder, treason, and plot!
I see no reason why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot...."

For a relatively new, 2005 production, "V for Vendetta" is a somewhat old-fashioned adventure flick, filled with action, humor, romance, politics, and the kind of swashbuckling that audiences hadn't seen in movies for many years (and don't say "for good reason"). It's a combination of "1984," "Zorro," "The Phantom of the Opera," "Beauty and the Beast," and "The Count of Monte Cristo," with only Doug Fairbanks, Errol Flynn, or Robert Donat missing from the title role. What more could you want? Well, OK, maybe a little less talk.

Old-fashioned or not, you can see at a glance why Warner Bros. transferred this Wachowski brothers-James McTeigue film to HD-DVD. It looks and sounds terrific. Besides, it's one of the studio's newer theatrical releases, and they have been putting all of their most-recent productions on high-definition discs as soon as possible.

Anyway, the movie's setting is the near future, where a repressive totalitarian regime has taken over England. The movie's hero, V, patterns himself after England's Guy Fawkes, the most famous of a group of anarchists who, in the so-called "Gunpowder Plot," attempted unsuccessfully on November 5, 1605, to kill King James I and the assembled Lords and Commons by blowing up Parliament in retaliation against what they considered oppressive laws against Roman Catholics. It may seem odd to moviegoers that a hero would fashion himself after an avowed anarchist, even unto wearing a Guy Fawkes mask, but, then, it may also seem odd to Americans that England continues to celebrate Guy Fawkes day on November 5, with observances that include fireworks, masked children begging "a penny for the guy," and the burning of little effigies of the conspirator. I suppose there is always something a little exciting and commendable about a David standing up to a Goliath, whether or not you agree with the David's motives or methods.

So, at the heart of "V for Vendetta," we get a man standing up for what he considers right and just, wearing a likeness of Fawkes, in deference to his own hero, and taking on the corrupt government. In addition, we get an old standby, the revenge plot. Evildoers have cruelly experimented upon V, tortured and disfigured him now, he's out to exact his vengeance, and his vengeance is exact. More important, he's out to topple the country's administration and to avenge the regime's murder of tens of thousands of its own people. These motives seem noble enough. There was some criticism of the film at the time of its release about the story glamorizing terrorism, but clearly V is a terrorist fighting injustice, the way Zorro did, so for a romantic adventure, it works. As the Bard said, "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." America's revolutionary leaders were patriots on one side of the Atlantic, traitors on the other. V is a freedom fighter of the best kind, and we don't have to agree with his violent methods to appreciate his motivations.

The movie is long at almost two-and-a-quarter hours, but I never noticed the time going by. It wasn't like: How long are they going to take to get to this island? How long are they going to be on this island? How many more dinosaurs are they going to find on this island? And how many more sunsets do we have to endure? "V for Vendetta" mixes a good deal of dialogue with healthy doses of action to produce a fairly well-rounded story. It's not just stuff blowing up every two minutes.

I liked Hugo Weaving as V, even if you never actually see him without a mask. He could have been Hugo Winterhalter for all I knew, but I loved his voice and gestures. He's a quintessential masked avenger, using knives the way Zorro used a sword or the Lone Ranger used a six-gun. Yet he's a tragic figure as well, a man scarred for life physically and emotionally, who has, nevertheless, not lost his humanity and can still feel love and compassion for those who deserve it.

I liked the revenge plot, tinged as it is with political overtones that one can just as easily ignore as one can apply to modern-day situations. It's easy to see Orwell's Big Brother in John Hurt's Adam Sutler, England's tyrannical leader. Big Brother in this case could represent any number of political leaders, past or present, liberal or conservative. Certainly, the idea of a politician creating a disaster in order to muster votes, stifle dissent, curtail civil rights, and assume a despotic rule is there in the movie for the taking, or the viewer can simply sit back, ignore the politics, and enjoy the daring deeds.

Moreover, I thought Natalie Portman made a lovely heroine, and I never experienced a problem with her accent, as some people did. I enjoyed the supporting cast, too, of Stephen Rea, John Hurt, Sinéad Cusack, Stephen Fry, Selina Giles, Rupert Graves, and other fine actors. I thought Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture" an appropriate symbol for triumph over oppression. The composer premiered it in 1882 to commemorate the seventieth anniversary of Russia's victory over Napoleon, and everybody's been using it for similar purposes ever since, so why not the Wachowskis. And I was glad the filmmakers kept the CGI and other special effects to a minimum, meaning right away the film has more substance than most action thrillers.

However, this is not to say I didn't have a few concerns. I know that a moviegoer should never question the logic of an old-time romantic adventure, but this movie does stretch credibility more than a tad. For instance, I kept wondering how a guy so disfigured that he has to wear a mask all the time buys his groceries. I mean, it's not like he has a houseboy who runs his errands for him. And it's not like he can just walk into any store with or without a mask on. Does he steal all his food? And he's got a houseful of art objects: How did he manage that all by himself? And, more important, where does he get his money? Are there more thefts involved that the filmmakers never tell us about? And his house: Early on V says it's underground, but later we see that it has a very high rooftop balcony, too. Where did he get such an elaborate place? Did he inherit it, or did he answer an ad in the newspaper? And don't the neighbors ever wonder about him going to and fro? And as for his clearing out an entire tunnel by himself, even if it took him ten years as he says it did, come on! One guy? And nobody noticed? And the entire government police force fails to notice the excavation, but a detective at the end of the movie finds it in two minutes? Yeah, well, nobody questions a guy in a bat suit, either, so I guess we can suspend our disbelief and go along with it. I did suspend it, and I really had no trouble.

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