V For Vendetta (5/10)

by Tony Medley

No wonder Western Union went out of business; Hollywood is sending all its messages in hundred million dollar movies! V for Vendetta (based on a graphic novel, co-created by Alan Moore and David Lloyd, published in 1981 and completed in 1989 after a five year hiatus when “Warrior” the independent monthly comic magazine folded after 26 episodes had been published, finally released by DC Comics in its entirely as a graphic novel) lines up on politically correct side on all the issues present day Hollywood considers important. Consider:

It toes the line on homosexuality, gratuitously throwing it into the mix when there is really no need.

Set in a futuristic London under a fascist dictatorship, Moore and Lloyd said that the story was greatly influenced by their political opinion. Says Lloyd, “Our attitude towards Margaret Thatcher’s ultra-conservative government was one of the driving forces behind the fascist British police state we created in Vendetta.” The fact is that Thatcher took over a moribund British economy when she was overwhelmingly elected in 1979. She led a massive denationalization of the British economy that turned the nation around. She was also a key player in Ronald Reagan’s defeat of the Soviet empire without firing a shot. So these guys, with two decades of hindsight, still ignore all her accomplishments and, instead, view her as something to be portrayed as a fascist. This is consistent with the left who refuses to recognize what Reagan and Thatcher and Pope John Paul II accomplished in the ‘80s, which included curing a horrible economic crisis and winning the cold war.

It has a negative portrayal of a religious leader, Bishop Lilliman (John Standing), an Anglican bishop, who preys on young girls, and whose pimp is another priest.

It glorifies blowing up a building and killing innocent people as a political tool. What kind of mindset makes a movie with a premise like that after 9/11?

The only positive religious reference is to the Koran.

The hero, V (Hugo Weaving), is a vicious killer who takes the law into his own hands. He was horribly disfigured in a fire so he wears a Guy Fawkes mask that always looks as if he’s smiling as he does his work (in fact, we never see V’s face as Weaving wears the mask thoughout the entire movie). If he were killing bad people because they controlled an evil society (which they do in this movie) so there was no other resort, that would be one thing. But V is killing people simply for the sake of personal revenge.

Being a Matrix-type movie, the film is replete with superhuman confrontations in which V appears invincible, no matter the odds or the weapons used against him. He falls in love with a woman he rescues, Evey Hammond (Natalie Portman), but the way he treats her, in converting her to his way of thinking, gives a new meaning to “tough love.”

Ostensibly he wants to continue what Guy Fawkes tried to do on November 5, 1605, blow up the Houses of Parliament to create anarchy, thus giving society a chance to remake itself. The moral is, clearly, that the end justifies the means.

That said, the movie is inventively produced (Joel Silver of “Lethal Weapon” and “Die Hard” fame and the Wachowski Brothers, of the Matrix trilogy) and directed (first timer James McTeigue, who was an assistant director on the Matrix trilogy). The costuming (Sammy Sheldon) is also inventive, as are the sets (Production Designer Owen Paterson), showing a London in 2020 as a fascist state.

When all the buzz about a movie is about how it is produced and directed and all the production values and the costumes and such, you can figure that it’s not much of a story or script. But this is Hollywood and this film has political credentials that appeal to those who shape Hollywood and influence public opinion.

The plot and characters of this movie aren’t the only fantasy associated with this film. Its political views and the stated beliefs of its creators in forming the basis for the story ignore the facts, defy credibility, and are more fantasy than the way V superhumanly avoids all the knives and bullets and police thrown at him.

Finally, consider this. These people, who apparently hate Margaret Thatcher, have their movie come to a violent end after vast mayhem and death. Thatcher, their bête noire, was a key part of a team that won the cold war without a shot being fired. Go figure.

March 14, 2006