Monday, March 20, 2006

"V for Vendetta" - the Wachowskis

So I went to see the movie this past Sunday. I have to admit that the comic I dismissed the other week is actually a paradigm of subtlety and nuance compared to this hunk of filmic crap. There are flashes of special effects brilliance and the mask is great, but the movie's a pile of waste matter.

For the unaware, "V for Vendetta" is about a Guy Fawkes masked bomb thrower and the waif he rescues from rape and death at the hands of the secret police taking on the government and social apparatus of a near future post-war fascist England. The original comic was Alan Moore's cry of rage against Thatcher. The movie is a limp cry of dopeyness against Bush and Blair. Moore had the temerity to examine his posited world as it was beset by real war and chaos. The Wachowski's set their version in a world of smoke, mirrors and fake villains.

I know people don't believe me when I say lefty anti-American stuff doesn't bother me if done well, but that's the truth. Whatever. Moore has the sense to allow his dictator possess real awareness of the weight of his horrific actions in the service of national order.
The movie's villain is called ADAM SUTLER (hint hint) and has a Hitler part in his hair. And he's played by John Hurt, once of the exquisitely brutal and moving "1984." That's the depth of subtley for the entire movie.

The extent of it's radicalism is that blacks, liberals, gays and Muslims weren't bad people and they shouldn't have been exterminated. The movie provides no rationale for why or how that could've happened or how a fundamentalist version of the Church of England reemerged in secular England. At least Moore portrayed this happening in the wake of famine, plague, flooding and war.

Some of the reviews hold up the canard that the it demands you decide for yourself if V is a hero or a terrorist. I'm not sure if they're dumb or blind. There's no question that V's a freedom fighter and everyone arrayed against him is utterly evil. Again, not a problem if done well. It wasn't.

As also wrote earlier, Moore kept his name from appearing on the movie. I wish I had heeded that warning and avoided it myself.

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