V For Vendetta

A ham-fisted mash-up of 1984 and Phantom of the Opera, with all the political nuance of a three-ring circus, V For Vendetta attempts to show the action-movie masses what the world might be like in 20 or 30 years if fear-mongering, religion-baiting right-wing propagandists were to maintain their chokehold on governmental power. Set in a totalitarian future London, the film features ridiculously overwrought villains and a vigilante antihero (Hugo Weaving, Agent Smith from the Matrix movies) in a theatrical black cape and Snidely-Whiplash-meets-harlequin-doll mask, who barely takes a breath between bouts of floridly purple prose and endless pontification. Surprisingly lackluster Natalie Portman plays the heroine, an insecure young woman who gets caught up in the vigilante's web and becomes an obsessive object of his the-ends-justify-the-means indoctrination. Based on a graphic novel by David Lloyd, adapted by writer-producers the Wachowski Brothers (who ruined their own Matrix franchise with similar overkill), director James McTeigue's film is at once so ludicrous and heavy-handed, so absurdly rococo and overly simplistic, that the end result is nothing short of laughable. Not recommended. [Note: Available in either widescreen or full screen versions, or a two-disc widescreen version, DVD extras include the 17-minute featurette “Designing the Near Future,” the 16-minute “making-of” featurette “Freedom Forever,” the 15-minute featurette “England Prevails: V for Vendetta and the New Wave in Comics,” the 10-minute historical “Remember Remember: Guy Fawkes and the Gun Powder Plot,” a two-minute montage backed by Cat Power's “I Found a Reason,” and trailers. Bottom line: a so-so extras package for an abysmal thriller.] (R. Blackwelder)