Pun Salad

Well, I just got around to seeing V for Vendetta. You probably know this, but: it was made by the Wachowski brothers, who also did the Matrix movies; it's based on a comic series by Alan Moore. Taken at face value, it's a pretty good mystery thriller as a masked revolutionary (V) takes on the fascistic British government, enlisting a reluctant foot soldier, played by Natalie Portman, as he goes along. Caught in the middle is a frumpy cop, Stephen Rea, trying to be both honest and decent.

Not taken at face value, however, the movie is pretty heavy-handedly stupid, trying to present "issues" of justifiable terrorism. The extra "making of" featurette on the DVD makes this even more explicit, as the actors and others involved in the flick mouth the usual tedious "progressive" clichés on revolution and "understanding the root causes" of terrorism. And then go home to their undoubtedly lavish homes, having pocketed the hefty checks made possible by the system they despise, that real terrorists would destroy in a second if they could.

A pretty good review is here; Damon Dimmick argues persuasively that the movie villians don't even have the depth and nuance of their counterparts in the comic book.