V FOR VENDETTA

"Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof."

When the Wachowski Brothers released their first production, THE MATRIX, in 1999, the film was immediately successful. It was and still to this day considered a revolution in visual effects, but its story is what made it a great film to me. The concepts of fate and choice were explored so well in THE MATRIX and its sequels were the reasons that these movies will last the test of time. Special effects in film evolve at a much quicker rate than ideas.

In V FOR VENDETTA, the Wachowski Brothers carry the idea of choice into their new film. Where most people have pointed out the film's political views and motivations as its foremost quality, I think it is no coincidence that the ideas that made THE MATRIX trilogy such a monumental success have been carried over to the Wachowskis' follow-up. The political concepts present in Alan Moore's blistering 1981 graphic novel have lost none of their relevance. The film, based in a futuristic totalitarian-ruled London, opens with a flashback. The time is November 5th, 1605, and Guy Hawkes is seen attempting to carry out his Gunpowder Plot, wherein he would blow up the English Parliament, housing several important government members with anti-Catholic agendas.

He is, as history has told us, captured, thwarted in his plan, tortured, and executed. The flashback scenes are inter spliced with the film's main protagonists, Evie Hammond (Natalie Portman) and V (Hugo Weaving) getting ready. As the clock strikes midnight, both leave their homes for different reasons, Evie to simply go to a friend's house, while V wants to make a few fireworks of his own.

After an instance that could be considered an instant of fate, V and Evie meet. She quickly finds herself wrapped up in the series of events in which V broadcasts his promise to every home in England to blow up Parliament in exactly one year. Like Neo, the hero in THE MATRIX, Evie is unsure of what to do. Eventually though, like Neo, she makes the choice to be the change that the world she lives in needs, instead of hoping that someone else will be.

As Evie, Natalie Portman shines. She brings an innocence and at the same time a sense of anger and intensity to a difficult, multilayered role. She, as good as she is, is not the star of V FOR VENDETTA. Hugo Weaving overshadow all of his other counterparts in every frame he is present in in the movie. While wearing a mask would be a handicap to most other actors, Weaving captures the essence of his character with the mask, acting as a man who is forced to be living in another man's body. V is deep, twisted, and never a true-and-true hero that audiences would usually expect in a film. He is much deeper and has beliefs that are revolutionary, therefore often outside of the lines where morals are often drawn. V is not afraid to kill the oppressors and make the oppressed find out how truly oppressed they are. The quicker one can accept this fact, the more one will appreciate Weaving's performance.

As a political message, V FOR VENDETTA. It is not only a strong message against oppression and fascism, but a warning for the future. It's message is relevant in such a turbulent world, where governments and their people come and go quickly. To me, though, it is much more meaningful as a showcase of how choices mold a person.