Roeper: Don't fall for false mask being put on 'Vendetta'

BY RICHARD ROEPER
Chicago Sun Times
Mar. 14, 2006

Headline from Monday's Drudge Report: "In the Wachowskis' bizarre V FOR VENDETTA, the hero -- yes, hero -- wants to blow up London."

Technically accurate. Journalistically? Wildly misleading. Imagine that.

The Drudge headline is a link to a story/review posted on Time.com. The story has this lead-in:

"The directors of 'The Matrix' make a movie where the hero is a faceless terrorist trying to blow up London. Yes, you read that right."

A reviewer for Newsweek chimes in: "The film may spark interesting debates -- about the nature of terrorism and governments, about the inalienable rights of artists to shock and provoke -- but what we're dealing with is a lackluster comic-book movie that thinks 'terrorist' is a synonym for 'revolutionary.' "

Well. Not really.

N for Not-so-Subtle

You're going to be hearing a lot about "V for Vendetta" this week -- from people who have seen the movie, and from commentators who will tell you they don't need to actually watch the film to condemn it as a pro-terrorism piece of garbage.

Deep breath. Let's take a moment to discuss what the movie is really about.

Based on the acclaimed series of comic books by Alan Moore, "V for Vendetta" is set in the London in an alternate universe of the near future -- about 20 years from now. (Moore was burned by Hollywood when "A League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" was turned into one of the worst films in recent memory. He has disassociated himself from the movie version of "V for Vendetta.") That means it's fictional London.

Although the time frame is in the not-too-distant future, the London depicted in the movie bears only a structural resemblance to today's reality.

If World War II had been different

In "V," Big Brother has taken over Britain. The fascist leader of the country (played by John Hurt) is a Hitlerian tyrant who spews invective on giant monitors placed everywhere. Free speech, homosexuality and artistic expression have been outlawed; citizens must abide by a curfew; and the streets are controlled by secret police. The government has conducted gruesome medical experiments on innocent citizens, with tragic and horrific results.

In short, the London in "V for Vendetta" looks like the world if Germany had won World War II.

There's no mistaking the Nazi imagery throughout the film, from Hurt's performance to the uniforms worn by the police to the flags adorning the city. The Wachowski brothers stopped just short of having Hurt sporting a Hitler mustache.

Terrorist or hero?

Like the anti-heroes in "The Phantom of the Opera" and "Beauty and the Beast," the masked creature known as V is a conflicted, tortured soul who falls for an innocent beauty and brings her into his hidden world.

Is V a terrorist? The oppressive government labels him as such. He tells Natalie Portman's Evey, "Blowing up a building can change the world." At one point she calls him a monster. He's also borderline insane, as Evey learns the hard way.

Still: Is he a terrorist? Of course, the real-life criminals that bombed subway trains and a bus in London last summer are terrorists, thugs, monsters. But that doesn't mean every act of blowing up a building is an act of terrorism. If we knew Osama bin Laden was alone in a building right now, would blowing up that building be an act of terrorism?

The villains in V are many. There's the Hitler-like dictator. His ruthless henchmen. A pedophile bishop. A hate-filled commentator who worked in a torture camp.

These are the power elite that V wants to destroy. The London in "V for Vendetta" is not the real London. In the London of "V," taking down the government would be an act of heroism, not terrorism.