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James McTeigue's V for Vendetta

by The Bridge
03/27/2006

D for Dollar Theater. Trust me. Especially, so I'm told, if you're a big Alan Moore fan - this movie is going to give you a toothache, brought on by the constant angry grinding and clenching that your jaw will be doing as you watch the graphic novelist's vision getting the typical Hollywood hacksaw treatment.

Which is not to say that it's all bad - I didn't say T for Terrible. There is, as you've surely heard by now, the always redemptive presence of Natalie Portman in the role of Evey (a sixteen year-old factory worker in the graphic novel - here she's an assistant of some sort at what appears to be Britain's only TV station, which airs Big Brotheresque news and propaganda for the totalitarian government of the U.K. in 2020). Portman manages to make a scene where she kisses a torture victim's last communication with the world (an autobiography WRITTEN ON TOILET PAPER, fer cryin' out loud) almost tolerable. But for my money, no one is more impressive here than Stephen Rea (of The Crying Game) turning in a solid performance as Detective Finch, the decent-cop character who's trying to determine the whereabouts and intentions of Hugo Weaving's V. Rea may not have the heartthrob face generally expected of Hollywood A-listers, and I'm convinced that's why he isn't one. Even in this sophomoric mess, he manages to maintain a sense of dignity and intelligence.

So, enough delirious praise - let's start seriously bitching. I am not familiar with Alan Moore's work. However, after doing a little research on the man, and talking to a handful of dedicated fans, I have come to the happy conclusion that Moore did not intend for the story of V to be a cut-and-dried hero epic, with the building-blasting V in the roll of righteous do-gooder. In an interview with The Beat, a disgruntled Moore expressed dismay with Hollywood's simplistic bastardizations of his works, and says of the graphic novel V for Vendetta: "I wanted a number of the fascists... to be real, rounded characters... They're not necessarily cartoon Nazis..." Someone shoulda run that buy John Hurt and Tim Pigott-Smith, who play head cheese Chancellor Sutler and his back-stabbing right-hand man Creedy, respectively. These dudes play Bad Guys, the former with eye-twitching off-with-everyone's-heads rants and the latter with a permanent sleazy sneer. Of course, theses guys are presumably following director's orders, so let's frown at James McTeigue for a moment. But just a moment, because I suspect he shares the blame quite equally with the guys responsible for screwing up the Matrix trilogy: the Wachowski brothers, who penned the groan-inducing screenplay.

Indeed, the story of V, as told by the Brothers Dub, becomes a black and white, Pure Good vs. Total Evil scenario that I figure both George W. Bush AND Osama Bin Laden would love - each casting themselves as the avenging hero, of couse. Again, this seems contrary to what Moore would have wanted.

But time and again, V for Vendetta does tell us what to think, with its nauseatingly didactic plotline and one-dimensional characterizations. When V comes to kill a doctor (Sinead Cusack, who navigates the dreck with aplomb) who headed up a nasty research project that killed scores of adolescents in concentration camp fashion, he gently tells her that her remorse and reform will not save her. "I have not come for what you hoped to do, I have come for what you did do," he says (or words to that effect), and then tells her she is going to die. It's a scene well played by the actors, but the preachy tone vexes, as it paints V as kind and righteous, with nary a hint of ambiguity.

Weaving, as V, does manage to conjure a little layering out of the diarrhetic script - his laughably verbose monologues are delivered with a manic energy that suggests that perhaps Weaving understands his character to be more than a little unbalanced. There is also a charmingly intriguing scene wherein Evey catches V shadow fencing with a dummy while watching his favorite movie, "The Count of Monte Cristo." For a fleetng moment, we are allowed a glimpse of the more childish side of V's psyche, one that hints at an unrealistic, Hollywood-inspired view of morality and heroism. But McTeigue and the W's refuse to give him much room to play with the notion, quickly turning the scene into a cute bonding session for V and Evey, with romantic overtones. Then it's back to repeatedly reminding us that the government is a Big, Bad, Meanie, torturing homosexuals and censuring art and religious tomes.

The pivotal boom-boom scenes - wherein V blows up places like the House of Parliament - are presented as beautiful affairs, complete with fireworks, classical music, and, in the grand finale, a horde of masked V-followers, many of them good-guy characters who met their untimely demise at the hands of the government, watching blissfully. There is no depiction of anyone who might have been killed in the explosions, and whenever V shows up to kill some nasty G-men, it's depicted in a burst of herioc fanfare, with the usual 3 Stooge-esquely comedic crumpling of dozens of Fingermen (the treacherous henchmen that troll London's streets, terrorizing anyone out after curfew in the name of public safety) with ninja-like swiftness and some natty one-liner (or ten-liner - did I mention the guy talks WAY too much?).

With all of this flash and bombast granted to the title character, the audience is not given much of a chance to question his motives or methods, although Moore made it clear that that was HIS intention all along. It's a shame, because a movie featuring a bombing terrorist as the people's hero could have sparked some quite interestnig dialogue right about now, about the moral issues involved in 9-11, at a time when folks on either side of the debate are becoming shockingly narrow-minded: "Osama is just like Hitler! No, Bush is! No, Osama..." hey, guys, Hitler's dead. And he didn't own any oil factories, or a copy of the Koran. Analogies are great for SATs, but for current events, they tend to oversimplify and mislead - just like V for Vendetta. Want my advice? Go get Alan Moore's graphic novel. I am, 'cause I'm willing to bet the cover price that Moore has more to say than this flimsy film.