I don’t want to let ‘V for Vendetta’ enter obscurity without some mention on this blog. There are various complaints one could make about V, but it is still superior to most movies of the past year. It is a political thriller much more than an action movie, with a very real puzzle at its center. The story has been prettified from its comic book origins, and updated to include Iraq, but it remains a story about how fascism arrives in myriad small ways rather than a big bang, so that the tipping point between our present society and a fascist state is very hard to identify.
It is a remarkably smart movie about terrorism for this day and age, perhaps why critics had such a problem with it. Some of the dialogue, besides being quite beautiful, provides a far more intelligent discussion of the justifications for terrorism than anything on PBS or NPR.
And there are a series of strong and moving performances, of which Stephen Rea’s world weary police detective is the best.