FILM REVIEW: V for Vendetta By: Gizzle V for Vendetta is a jarring film starring Hugo Weaving (most famous for his role as Agent Smith in the Matrix trilogy) and Natalie Portman (Garden State, Star Wars, and Oscar nominee for Closer, ). Set in modern U.K., the audience is engrossed in a society lead by a tyrannical government acting autonomously in the protection of its interests to the detriment of its citizens. The film begins as a group known as the “fingers”, the government elite, responds to a terrorist attack on a government building. The bombing, casually dismissed as a “planned demolition” by the finger-controlled media compels the audience to identify with the citizens of a community dependant upon their conservative right-aligned government to protect them from ruin and civil unrest unlike the war-stricken and perilous former United States. The film continues in its revolutionary tirade as the “hero” of the film, a masked vigilante named V, quickly executes a hostile takeover of the government’s propaganda machine, the BTN (British Television Network “ironically” similar to CNN), claiming responsibility for the attack and inviting the fear-stricken citizens to stand with him one year from the date of the attack as the present-day parliament is destroyed in a similar explosive fashion. Almost a politically awakening film as the documentary Fahrenheit 911 by Michael Moore, this remake of a graphic novel series is gripping in its message throughout that “People should not be afraid of their government, a government should be afraid of its people.” The fingers yearn in vain to thwart the promised destruction of its fear inducing system of control over its nation. It’s interesting to enjoy the film simply because in essence the lines between good/bad and right/wrong become skewed. Unless of course, murder and devastation sit well with you as higher moral obligations. One on hand you have a government whose modus operandi is unflinching devotion by its citizens in all aspects of life, i.e. sexual orientation, religious beliefs, and political agenda. On the other you have a violent and murderous everyman character whose emotionally numb tactics seemed justified. One asks oneself just when enough is enough as the film builds to a crescendo on the eve of the terrorist plot. The tone of the film is effectively appropriate in terms of timing. I’m certain the movie would not be as drawing if it weren’t delivered to a society where homosexual love is constitutionally unsound, the term liberal is used as a derogatory remark and civil unrest wages over centuries old theological principle about abortion, or cloning, or simply who typifies the enemy. In all the film serves as a methodically dramatic and special effects enriched sounding board for a nation split on axis of moral opinion. Natalie Portman carries the weight of the film on her shoulders but the overtly theatric Weaving is appropriate in portraying a psychologically destroyed recluse bent on a vendetta any politically conscious and yet jaded citizen of an economic powerhouse could absorb.