"V for Vendetta" vexes
By Bradley Hart
The Collegian
Sometime in the next decade, the United States will launch a series of disastrous wars in the Middle East that will sap the nation’s military and economic strength.
At the same time, terrorists launch a series of devastating attacks including the release of a biological weapon in a British water treatment facility, an elementary school and the London Underground, killing tens of thousands of people.
As a result of the world turmoil, the United States collapses into civil war while an ultra-conservative government is elected in Great Britain that proceeds to establish what can only be called a police state in an effort to stop the bloodshed.
This is the bleak picture of the future painted by the makers of “V for Vendetta,” the new thriller starring Natalie Portman and written by the Wachowski brothers of “Matrix” fame.
The film opens four centuries before the present, showing the plot and death of Guy Fawkes, the Catholic soldier who attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605.
Yet an extensive knowledge of British history is not required to understand the later events of the film. References to Fawkes run rampant in the form of the main character’s mask and the terrorist plot he develops but it’s not necessary to know the history to understand what’s happening.
The hero (or perhaps anti-hero) of the film, a masked man known only as V, is responsible for a number of terrorist actions and plots against the repressive government of the United Kingdom.
The government agents seeking to keep a lid on V’s plots, and society itself, have no problem employing brutal means including killings, nighttime raids and arrests.
Phone conversations are universally monitored and random audio sweeps by agents in vans with surveillance equipment poll public opinion while giving them leads on potentially subversive activity.
Television news channels are universally controlled by the government and overtly lie to cover up stories deemed inappropriate for the public or damaging to the government.
Despite the promising premise of the film, namely the idea of the individual’s struggling against an oppressive society, “Vendetta” ultimately bogs down in the overly complicated subplots and back stories that the filmmakers included somewhat inexplicably.
The linear chronological progression of the film is interrupted too many times by flashbacks to the events that allegedly led up to the world as it exists in the film.
There are also too many irrelevant events shown involving characters that are ultimately minor or even irrelevant to the greater plot.
The movie’s writers also failed to give the film a singular feel or theme. There are a vast variety of scenes that are only linked by implausible coincidences. Some lines are so badly written that they inspired laughter, coy remarks and downright derision from the audience.
One of the film’s climactic scenes was so out of place that it seemed to have been thrown in simply because of the influence of the Wachowski brothers.
Sadly, these flaws, coupled with the running time of more than two hours serve to frustrate the viewer and drown out the overt political message of the film with irrelevant data and somewhat gratuitous violence.
Yet even with these flaws, “Vendetta” throws enough twists and turns at the viewer to inspire reflection on the state of the world in the present day and what the future has in store.
One of the film’s final twists leaves the viewer wondering whether anything we’ve seen can be considered accurate or whether the entire timeline set forth by various characters was nothing more than another propagandistic invention of the government — or its opponents.
In this sense, the viewer feels the confusion and angst that the denizens of the London of the future feel in regard to their government and those who threaten it.
Unfortunately, this message is largely negated by a bloated, complicated and circuitous plotline that simply has too much going on to fully grasp.
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