Author: Roger Ebert
Translator: Yi Ersan
Proofreading: Issac
Source: Rogerebert .com (March 16, 2006)
It's 2020. A virus is raging all over the world, most Americans are dead, and Britain is ruled by a fascist dictator who promises security but not freedom. There was a man against him, a man named V, who traveled around London like a ghost, and the efforts of the police were useless. He wore the mask of Guy Fox, who had tried to blow up the Capitol in 1605.
November 5 has been designated Guy Fawkes Night, a day on which British students have lit a bonfire to burn a dummy of Fox. On this night in 2020, V rescued the young TV reporter Ivy from the police and asked her to follow her, allowing her to witness the blowing up of Old Bailey Street.
V-Vendetta (2005)
The film slowly shows V's feats over the next year, until the night he vows to deal a devastating blow to the dictatorship. We are seeing a totalitarian state exercising iron-fisted control over its citizens, only to be humiliated by a lone ranger who seems to be invincible. The government tried to prevent the masses from learning about V's behavior — for example, by inventing a plausible explanation for the destruction of Old Bailey Street. But V took over state television, claiming responsibility for the act.
The story was originally a comic book by Alan Moore and published in 1982 and 1983. However, considering the change of regime, the image of the protagonist is also completely different. Is he a terrorist or a freedom fighter? Britain was ruled by a man named Suttler, who called his subordinates through wall-sized television screens, seemingly the embodiment of "Big Brother".
Suttler was played by John Hurt, who played Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984). (V looks more like Jack the Ripper because he's able to boldly get in and out of areas that police believe are under control.) This similarity is easily evident in Moore's work, his comic book From Hell, about Jack the Ripper, and the brothers Albert Hughes and Alan Hughes, who brought it to the big screen in 2001.
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984)
V-Kills is co-written and co-written and executive produced by Andy Wachowski and Lana Wachowski, who also publicly chose to change genders to women in 2016 and renamed Lily Wachowski, and whose Matrix also tells the story of rebels who rebelled against the Matrix.
The Matrix (1999)
The film is more literary, less dominated by special effects (though there are plenty of them), and full of more interesting ideas because we can't be sure of the information in it. Is the film about a 2006 fable, a cautionary tale, or a pure fantasy? It can be interpreted in many ways, and there's no doubt that I'll keep refreshing my cognition from endless emails.
The character of V and his relationship with Ivy (Natalie Portman) is easily reminiscent of Phantom of the Opera. Both V and Phantom wear masks and move freely through underground space, controlling others through their imaginations and having a fixed soundtrack.
Phantom of the Opera (2004)
One important difference is that V's facial disguise doesn't change (unlike the villain in Batman), but a mask that always carries the same smiling expression. Hugo Viven created the character with his voice and body language, but I was reminded of my confusion when watching Thomas and Friends: If something speaks, its lips should move.
Still, Portman's Ivy has plenty of room to perform for the most part, transforming herself from a dutiful citizen to V's sympathizer, and the film is full of talented character actors.
In addition to Hurt, who plays the evil dictator, we see the cop played by Stephen Ray and Rupert Graves being sent to search for V. Tim Piggott Smith plays the dictator's minions. These people exist in seemingly safe scenes until V sweeps in like a whirlwind, using martial arts, ingenious weapons, and elements of surprise. Why the mask doesn't limit his peripheral vision is a problem, and I won't discuss it more here.
There are a lot of ideas in this movie. The most prominent is V's belief: "The people should not be afraid of the government, the government should be afraid of the power of the people." I'm not sure if V is right; of course, ideally, governments and people should coexist happily. Fear in either direction leads to violence. But V wants to overthrow a totalitarian state, and it's only been a year, and we watched him improvise a revolution. He has little support, but Stephen Frye plays a TV host who puts himself at risk for criticizing the government.
Most action thrillers are based on comic novels, and viewers get an upgraded audiovisual feast. Directed by James McTeger, V-Kills almost always has some pretty interesting things happening, inviting us to decipher the characters and plot and apply the information anywhere. Sometimes you think the soundtrack should be Sex Pistol's Anarchy in the UK. The film ends with a scene of violence that makes me, a man who loves London, very unhappy; of course, V's enemies are humans, not architecture.
Alan Moore drew a line with the film, and he removed his name from two films adapted from his comic book, From Hell and Skyfall. He is not so much dissatisfied with the film as he is with the deals involving the use of his work.
I haven't read the original book, I don't know what parts have been changed, or what parts are missing, but I found a bold confusion of ideas in V-Kills, and people enjoy crazy disorder. Trying a fable about terrorism and totalitarianism that is both pertinent and easy to understand may be impossible, dangerous, or it may not do well at the box office.