V for Vendetta

Ebert had mixed feelings about a movie that I very much enjoyed. V for Vendetta, even for someone not familiar with the graphic novel from which it was loosely based, is a very entertaining film.

I enjoy movies where there is a price to be paid. In this movie the price of security was the almost total elimination of human rights. The extension of power to the extreme and the lack of transprency in government leads to the natural exploitation of power. The human condition is a flawed one. We are capable of so much good, and yet at the same time have evil in our hearts. This movie shows what happens when power is concentrated in the hands of a single individual.

The story takes place in London, year 2020. A virus has swept the world, leaving many of the world's superpowers in ruins. England, whose pharamacutical companies were lucky enough to have found a cure, managed to stem the flow of deaths after about 100,000 had perished. After this people frightened allowed a government of ever increasing power to take hold, giving up their basic human rights in the process. The dictator who came to power gradually shed any illusions of balanced governing as his power grew, and after twenty years had established complete and total control over the entire populace of england, eliminating those whom he considered undesirables. One man who was born out of the chaos that spawned the current state of affairs is a year away from completing his twenty year plot to overthrow the corrupt state, and this movie tells the story of that year.

If you enjoyed 1984 or "A brave new world," this is definately a movie to check out.