By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com
Vendetta: Hoberman sez impossible not to break into a grin
Over at the VOICE, J. Hoberman keeps his fingers nimble in their cover package on all things V for Vendetta. Somehow, he seems smarter, more stylish and more sly than some of the early typists on this one: “Supremely tasteless, V for Vendetta, with the mysterious V (Hugo Weaving) haunting London in an insouciantly smiling Guy Fawkes mask, was scheduled to have its premiere last November on the day of the Plot’s 400th anniversary. The opening was delayed out of deference to last summer’s London subway bombings… What’s remarkable about the Wachowski scenario, as opposed to Moore’s original, is the degree to which it stands Fawkes on his head—recuperating this proto–suicide bomber as a figure of revolt… A movie of multitudinous comic book tropes, V for Vendetta is predicated on secret identities, floridly alliterative dialogue, and gnomic bromides… V’s lone disciple, Evey (Natalie Portman), daughter of two disappeared social activists, works in a version of Orwell’s Ministry of Truth. Given V’s essential abstraction, she’s the movie’s most human presence. A former Broadway “Anne Frank,” Portman adds Saint Joan to her baggage—once captured and processed by the police, she looks like a diminutive, doe-eyed Falconetti… Absorbing even in its incoherence, V for Vendetta manages to make an old popular mythology new. Impossible not to break into a grin: It’s the thought that counts.” [Smarter smart-guy stuff at the link plus links to the VOICE sidebars on the pic and its background.]