B for Banditry

Here's how Hugo Weaving makes an entry:

"This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is it vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished, as the once vital voice of the verisimilitude now venerates what they once vilified. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin van-guarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose vis-à-vis an introduction, and so it is my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V. "

Dorothy Parker once reviewed an actress as "running the whole gamut of emotions, from A to B". Natalie Portman faces the same challenge, rather successfully, in the movie "V for Vendetta". It remains an open question whether emotion was required for her role: if not, she has certainly delivered a superb performance as the exponential e^V, who is tortured by the hero "V", so that she loses the capacity to feel fear. I wonder how he did that: did he threaten to take her logarithm, and make her the same as him?

V is a superhuman morgothian hero straight out of jail, played by Hugo Weaving (Agent Schmidt) who throws knives in slow motion and uses plate mail to dodge bullets the hard way. He dodged bullets better in "Ze Matrix", you know. And don't forget his alliterative approach to actors appearing - which is one of the (actually many) things that prevent me from swearing at the movie. V can actually get away with murder, just because of the special effects. Unfortunately, we don't learn too much of his history. As circumstances turn out though, it doesn't matter. The important thing to note is that V is not his name, or his initial.

We can all be grateful that the Wacky brothers have to make a really convoluted sequel if it is to be believable.

This movie does not deserve to be panned: It deals with the knotty problems of democratic government (the people get what they deserve, good and hard), terrorism (Our freedom fighters, your revolutionaries, their insurgents), and how to remove a dictator from power (Normandy? Schlock and Ow? Superheroes? Take your pick.)

Let's see, what else is there to praise? The camerawork and CG, the postmodern detective who uses Big Brother's original database to do his detecting - very effectively, I must add - he's more believable than Little Tommy Precrime (which is faint praise, but really: he's good. Morse in his younger days without the sense of humour.) We'll leave the plot out, though. 1984 and Deus Ex do the dystopian concept better.

Lessons learned from this movie:

• Nanocameras exist. RFID Dust, eat your heart out! The Wackies put one in a raindrop, and film one of the most spectacular scenes of the movie: The rain falling onto e^V as she tries a (thankfully solitary) Winslet on the sort of balcony Juliet would be tempted to push Romeo off of.
  
  
• The Wacky brothers can get away with anything. Almost.
  
  
• Domino logic is a good alternative to billboards, when it comes to putting up your signature in red and black (Incidentally, anybody has an idea of how far they were from the Guiness record in this?)
  

Overall, I'd suggest watching this movie. Closely. It might get away.