Movie Reviews By Kam Williams

Oscar Wrap 2006
Crash Crashes Brokeback Mountain’s Coming-Out Party, While Rude Gangsta Rappers Pimp Out Oscar

The 78th Annual Academy Awards were presented at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood on a fairly uneventful evening which unfolded, in terms of winners, pretty much as expected, at least by this critic, who correctly forecast the results in 11 of the 13 major categories. The only major surprise came at the very end of the festivities when Crash ruined Brokeback Mountain’s coming out party by taking the Oscar for Best Picture.
In truth, this triumph was just a mild upset, since Crash was a far more engaging, entertaining and thought-provoking film in the first place. Plus, the gay-themed Brokeback had suffered from a very vocal homophobic backlash in the wake of its early success at the Golden Globes and elsewhere on the awards circuit.
Yet, with Crash, Brokeback, King Kong and Memoirs of a Geisha garnering three Academy Awards each, it’s hard to say whether any movie really walked away as a clear-cut winner. Crash may have been picked as the best flick, but Brokeback’s Ang Lee was chosen as the Best Director.
And neither picture landed any of the coveted acting honors. In fact, the Academy hadn’t even nominated Terrence Howard, Thandie Newton or Sandra Bullock, despite their delivering career performances in Crash. Instead, it deemed Howard more deserving for his outing as a pimp in Hustle & Flow, a film which, quite curiously, ended up earning its only Oscar for Best Song, a misogynistic melody by Three 6 Mafia entitled, “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp.”    
The Memphis-based group made history on stage even before landing the Oscar, because they were the first gangsta’ rappers ever to perform at the Academy Awards. Band members Jordan “Juicy J” Houston, Cedric Coleman and Paul “DJ Paul” Beauregard had to be bleeped during the song, despite previously promising not to use any foul language.
In case the network censors’ interference prevented you from enjoying the “flow” of the expletive-laced lyrics, some of the lines you might have missed went like this: “A whole lot of [b-word]es talking [s-word],” and “It’s [f-word]ed-up where I live, but that’s just how it is, “ and “[N-words] hating on me cause I got hoes.” Charming… 
I’ve been wrong before, but I’d guess (and hope) that this offensive ghetto anthem is unlikely to join the ranks of Oscar-winning best songs like “Over the Rainbow,” “Lullaby of Broadway,” “When You Wish upon a Star,” “White Christmas,” “Moon River,” “The Shadow of Your Smile,” “The Way We Were,” “Flashdance,” “My Heart Will Go On,” and so many other memorable classics which made the jump from the screen into the country’s cultural fabric.
Inappropriately attired for the black-tie event, trendsetters Three 6 Mafia still stole the show, sporting sweatsuits, sneakers, sunglasses, t-shirts, baseball caps, diamond-studded teeth plus plenty of bling. They had to be bleeped again during their euphoric acceptance speech which established the trash-talking trio as clearly the most animated and most grateful of the Oscar recipients.
After they left the stage, host Jon Stewart remarked, “I think it just got a little easier for a pimp,” before asking, “How come they’re the most excited people here tonight?” But the caustic comedian, himself, undoubtedly deserved a share of the blame for the affair’s absence of energy, since the late-night comic failed to show much evidence of the acerbic, politically-tinged wit everyone expected of him.
Instead, the Oscars featured a parade of homosexual humor, starting with an opening featuring former hosts Billy Crystal and Chris Rock sharing a tent, ala Brokeback. That sequence culminated with Stewart in bed dreaming of sleeping with Halle Berry but waking up in the arms of George Clooney, another gay panic joke.
Later, presenters Will Ferrell and Steve Carrell came out in heavy make-up and flirted with each other in another gender-bending bit that flopped. Almost as flat was Stewart’s comment that the movie Capote, “showed America that not all gay people are virile cowboys. Some are effete New York intellectuals.”
Stewart also seemed comfortable with self-deprecating humor, whether poking fun at his own acting career (marked by flops like Death to Smoochy) or at his and others being Jewish. For instance, after Ben Stiller cavorted across the stage in a form-fitting, lime-green leotard in a skit about special effects, which bombed, Jon pointed out that this was “proof that he was Jewish,” implying that the outfit was tight enough to tell that genital Ben was circumcised.
Additional Borscht Belt shtick focused on spinning the Hannukah dreidle and on the idea that Spielberg’s Schindler’s List and Munich were the first two installments of a presumably-depressing Jewish trilogy. Who knows why the TV special’s scriptwriters decided to avoid controversy, opting for inscrutable ethnic and sexual preference asides over Stewart’s supposed strong suit, namely, hot button political issues?
Other than a convoluted quip about Bjork not being able to attend the Oscars because Dick Cheney had shot her, the material was decidedly tame, and not really left-leaning. To the contrary, Stewart tended to make light of Hollywood’s liberal tendencies.  
Personally, I found the most infuriating aspect of this year’s Academy Awards to be the live orchestra’s playing during all the acceptance speeches (except for that of Lifetime Achievement-winner Robert Altman). Not only did this repeated distraction make it hard to hear the honorees, but it appeared to be preventing them from organizing their thoughts as they attempted to speak.
As a result, Three 6 Mafia easily made the most memorable mark of the evening, which means the 78th Annual Academy Awards will undoubtedly go down in history as the night the Oscars were pimped-out by gangsta’ rap.

16 Blocks
•••1/2

Bruce Willis and Mos Def as Odd Couple in Crooked Cop Crime Thriller

Jack Mosley (Bruce Willis) is an aging, depressed detective with a drinking problem. Eddie Bunker (Mos Def) is a trash-talking, petty criminal with marbles in his mouth who has spent about half of his life mumbling to himself behind bars while dreaming about opening his own bakery. So, with nothing in common, there’s not much reason for the grizzled NYPD veteran and the career perp to expect to meet, let alone land on the same side of the law.
Yet, that’s exactly what happens the fateful morning their paths do cross when Jack is ordered to escort Eddie from jail to the courthouse just 16 blocks away in lower Manhattan. What should have amounted to an uneventful, brief car ride turns into a thrill-a-minute chase after the alcoholic decides to make a brief detour to a liquor store. For he emerges from the establishment only to find a hit man with a gun cocked at the head of his prisoner.
Quick on the draw, Jack shoots the assassin first, jumps in the driver’s seat and starts careening across Chinatown pumping Eddie with questions to learn why anybody might want him dead. Turns out he’s scheduled to testify in less than two hours in a case against a half-dozen crooked cops.
Next, when Jack calls for backup, his former partner, Frank (David Morse), makes it clear that the entire Department wants this key prosecution witness wasted. Confronting an ethical crisis, Jack must decide whether to look the other way or try to break the proverbial Blue Wall of Silence.
Of course, he opts for the latter, which means he and his charge must run a gauntlet of the most corrupt, immoral and bloodthirsty officers imaginable. The splatter which ensues in the ensuing escape is the essence of 16 Blocks, a high-impact action flick directed by Richard Donner (Lethal Weapon 1, 2, 3, & 4).
Ordinarily, the success or failure of a claustrophobic, odd-couple caper like this turns on the chemistry between the leads who have to spend the entire picture on top of each other. However, this flick’s pressurized plotline is simply too urgent to allow for much in the way of downtime for the two to develop any intimacy. Nonetheless, both Bruce Willis and Mos Def, though playing simplistically-drawn, almost cartoonish archetypes, manage to enhance their slight characters with enough endearing qualities and offbeat idiosyncrasies to sway the audience to empathize with their plight.
Meanwhile, like your typical computer game, wave after wave of ghoulish adversaries arrive to be eluded, dealt with, or dispatched, soulless demons devoid of a conscience. Pound-for-pound,16 Blocks provides the most pressure-cooked pyrotechnics, fisticuffs, gunplay, car crashes, back alley dashes and fire escape leaps ever crammed into a cinematic chase lasting less than a mile.
It’s Hollywood’s concession to anti-establishment video games like Grand Theft Auto, only sans joystick. And larger than life.

Rated PG-13 for violence, profanity, and scenes of intense action.
Running time: 105 minutes
Studio: Warner Brothers

Dave Chappelle‘s Block Party
••••

Conscious-Raising Concert Flick Combines Comedy and Hip-Hop

Last Spring, after signing a $60 million contract with Comedy Central, Dave Chappelle walked off the set ostensibly over creative differences, and disappeared into thin air at the height of his fame. Since his show was the #1 series at the Network, it stands to reason that his legions of fans must be starving for more of his outrageous, color-conscious skits.
However, anyone banking on that trademark brand of humor is likely to be a bit disappointed by Dave Chappelle‘s Block Party, for this concert flick’s strength lies in it’s inspired musical performances by a host of hip-hop artists who are not at all shy about sharing their sharp-edged political perspective. Shot in Bedford-Stuyvesant at the corner of Quincy and Downing Streets on an overcast day in September of 2004, the film features such rabble-rousing rappers as Kanye West, Erykah Badu, Mos Def, Jill Scott, Common, The Roots, Talib Kweli, Dead Prez, Cody Chestnutt, John Legend and The Fugees, who reunited just for the affair.
Although the weather wouldn’t cooperate, rain did nothing to douse the fire of these passionate troubadours whose incendiary messages ranged from “F*ck the police!” to “I’m up for shooting some crackers at City Hall,” to lyrics which suggested assassinating the President on Saturday and burying him on Sunday. Sporting t-shirts (Che Guevara) and buttons (Black Panthers) advancing equally-progressive causes, some spoke earnestly during interludes about their heartfelt concerns for the planet.
For instance, Mos Def, introduced Fred Hampton, Jr., the son of the late Panther leader who was shot in his sleep by the cowardly Chicago Police over 30 years ago. Exhorting the crowd to put their fists in the air while chanting “Free all political prisoners!” the movie often seemed more like a demonstration straight out of the Sixties than what one would expect of a rap concert.
This is a far cry from the gangsta’ fare one finds in heavy rotation on MTV and BET. For, I didn’t notice even one refrain referring to women disparagingly, or bragging about bling, genital endowment, or encouraging black-on-black crime. As Dave explains after the opening credits, he picked “performers who have a message that’s more than making money.”
What is utterly bizarre, as a consequence, is the stark contrast between their dignified style and Chappelle’s chosen low-brow approach, since he repeatedly trades in the F-word, the B-word and the N-word. The question is whether his attention-grabbing punchlines lines like, “F*ck you bitch!” “Where’s the money, ho?” and “P*ssy ho!” will make more of a lasting mark with the audience than the relatively dignified ideas espoused by the others.
To me, Dave’s jokes were pretty lame. Here’s a couple to give you a good idea what to expect. “Your mother has three ti*ties, one for milk, one for water, the other one’s out of order.” Or, “How many white folks does it take to screw in a lightbulb? None, because they’ll get a n*gger to do it for ‘em.” And then there was one about the “industrious prostitute who had another vagina surgically implanted on her hip so she could make some money on the side?”
At a moment of honest reflection, Chappelle curiously admits to seeing himself as mediocre, and his material here sure seems to confirm that. During the first five or ten minutes of the movie Dave is giving free reign to roam the streets with a megaphone in his hand, but nothing funny enough ever happened to elicit a laugh out of anybody at my screening.
Fortunately, Dave’s dumb antics are easily overshadowed by the other performers, particularly Mos, Erykah, Kanye, and of course, The Fugees, reunited to deliver a most-moving rendition of Killing Me Softly. After watching Block Party, it is easy to understand how Chappelle might have withdrawn into his shell, a tortured soul, torn between the material that made him a mega star and a desire to deliver a message of lasting value with substance. 
The world will be waiting for the answer when he finally returns to TV.

Unrated
Running time: 100 minutes
Studio: Rogue Pictures

Don't Trip... He Ain't Through with Me Yet
••••

Comedian Steve Harvey Keeps It Clean in Family-Oriented Concert Flick

At a time when the state of stand-up comedy has degenerated to the point where the typical routine tends to be a profanity-laced appeal to the lowest common denominator, a movie like Don't Trip... He Ain't Through with Me Yet arrives like a breath of fresh air. The movie is a clean solo concert performed by Steve Harvey in front of 16,000 believers at MegaFest in Atlanta, an annual, Christian-oriented event hosted by Bishop T.D. Jakes.
Harvey, a six-time, NAACP Image Award-winner, has enjoyed one of the most versatile and enduring careers in all of show business. After getting his start on the stand-up circuit, he’s went on to land his own TV sitcom, host variety shows, write books, do dramatic and comic roles on the big screen, and even still finds time for his syndicated radio program.
Although this very talented Renaissance Man had previously enjoyed phenomenal success touring the country as one of the Original Kings of Comedy, Don't Trip admittedly proved to be a challeng because he had never really attempted to make a live audience laugh without resorting to coarse language and off-color material. Intimate in feel despite of the size of the venue, this picture captures Harvey eliciting a barrel full of belly laughs, while sharing a sincere, deeply spiritual side of himself we’d never witnessed before.
Yes, Steve’s hilarious, frenetically pacing the floor in his trademark oversized suit and perfectly-coiffed ‘fro, keeping the huge throng enthralled for over an hour with animated bits about church ushers with bad feet, choir members with cellulite, and Michael Jackson (“I ain’t got no 8 year-old buddies”). By the end, this master storyteller evokes favorable comparisons to Cosby, making one wonder why he hadn’t tried to work clean before.
But he’s also stone-cold sober and doesn’t joke at tender moments when reflecting about having been shot, having been to jail, and having had to live in his car for two years during less-blessed days. The contrast between the familiar image of Harvey as the brash, above-it-all funnyman we’ve come to love over the years and the suddenly vulnerable soul we now see up on the screen is unusually endearing and, ultimately, winning.
Although he never says so explicitly, one cannot help but suspect that making this movie marked a significant milestone, not merely professionally, but personally, and that Christ now plays a significant part in his life. For, how else can one explain a finale featuring tears streaming down Steve’s face, as he turns over the stage to his Lord and Saviour.
Faith-based entertainment at its best, and with 10 times as many laughs per-minute as that bottom-feeding Chappelle flick currently in theaters which, by comparison, repeatedly relies on the shock value of the b-word, n-word, t-word, p-word and f-word in serving up its mostly misogynistic brand of humor.

PG for some suggestive material.
Running time: 78 minutes
Studio: Code Black Entertainment

Failure to Launch
••• 1/2

Desperate Parents Hire Temptress to Seduce Still-at-Home Son in Screwball Comedy 

35 year-old Tripp (Matthew McConaughey) is a confirmed bachelor with no plans for marriage. That doesn’t bother his parents as much as the fact that he still lives at home, rent-free, with no interest in cutting the umbilical, despite a successful career as a pleasure craft broker. Meanwhile his mother, Sue (Kathy Bates), is getting fed up with waiting on him hand-and-foot, and his father, Al (Terry Bradshaw), a closet nudist, is just itching to be free to roam around the house naked.
It doesn’t help matters any that Tripp’s two best friends, Ace (Justin Bartha) and Demo (Bradley Cooper), are similarly-situated adultescents who share his immature inability to overcome inertia. As members of the so-called Boomerang Generation, they too are quite content mooching off their parents for room and board with no intention of ever leaving the nest.
Fortunately for Sue and Al, help is available in the person of Paula (Sarah Jessica Parker). Paula’s an irresistibly attractive consultant who has carved out her niche by putting her womanly wiles to work coaxing reluctant men out of their childhood homes. So they retain the gorgeous gal’s services to seduce Tripp, but with the strict understanding, of course, that she’ll stop short of sleeping with him.
This improbable point of departure jumpstarts Failure to Launch, a wacky, well-crafted romantic comedy which unfolds like a cross between Hitch and Meet the Parents. Provided you’re able to swallow this picture’s silly premise, you’re likely to enjoy the assorted screwball antics up on the screen.

Predictably, Paula’s professionalism goes out the window when she finds herself falling in love with the handsome hunk she’s been hired to date, much to the chagrin of her impatient clients. However, as this exercise in the obvious winds its way to happily-ever-aftersville, we’re treated to a ton of laughs, most of which come courtesy of a stellar cast of colorful supporting characters.
In fact, Zooey Deschanel steals so many scenes as Paula’s anti-social roommate that she deserves to share top billing alongside stars McConaughey and Parker. The emerging ingénue adopts a flat affect, delivering line-after-line with perfect timing, playing a blasé misanthrope irreversibly at odds with the entire world.
For instance, here’s how Kit bluntly explains her decision not to join her colleagues at TGI Fridays for Happy Hour: “I don’t like that place, or anybody I work with.” And when Paula asks Kit whether she’s interested in either of Tripp’s buddies, she responds sarcastically, “How shall I choose?” after pointing out that one just got fired from Kinko’s while the other is gainfully employed. When not indulging Kit’s sublime sense of humor, Failure to Launch tends to trade in decidedly less cerebral fare, whether it’s Terry Bradshaw romping around in his birthday suit, or an anthropomorphic animal sketch featuring a mockingbird, a dog, a chipmunk, a lizard, or a porpoise. These momentary distractions don’t diminish one’s ability to enjoy a generally sophisticated endeavor which succeeds at poking fun at a supposed trend which threatens to turn into a full-blown social phenomenon.
Oh, and there’s a gushy love story in there as well.
  
PG-13 for sexual content, male nudity, and profanity. 
Running time: 97 minutes
Studio: Paramount Pictures

Madea's Family Reunion
••••

Tyler Perry Back in Drag as Sassy Senior Citizen

When we last encountered Mabel “Madea” Simmons, the revenge-minded sister was pistol-whipping her granddaughter’s philandering husband in the Diary of a Mad Black Woman. This time out, the sassy senior citizen has toned-down her act to offset her trademark intensity with equal measures of inspirational advice.
As a result, Madea's Family Reunion is a far better film than the first in that it not only dishes out endless belly laughs, but also offers food for thought, opportunities for introspection and several uplifting messages. Perhaps just as importantly, the picture offers one of those rare cinematic experiences where we get to see a recognizable African-American community grappling with an array of real-life issues, as opposed to the typical urban-oriented comedy’s superficial send-up of offensive, jive stereotypes interested in nothing deeper than insulting some artificial aspect of each other’s supposed social status.
Here, Madea and Uncle Joe, both played by writer/director Tyler Perry, are the only characters allowed to indulge themselves in the sort of over-the-top nonsense which marked the original. Meanwhile, the rest of their relatives find themselves enmeshed in messy melodramas.
Lisa (Rochelle Aytes) is about to marry Carlos (Blair Underwood), a wealthy banker, but she’s thinking of calling off the wedding because he’s beaten her every day since they got engaged. Her half-sister, Vanessa (Lisa Arrindell Anderson) is a struggling single mom who has remained celibate since being abandoned after her second child was born.Their mother (Lynn Whitfield) is a conniving shrew who favors one daughter over the other and who cares more about money than the spiritual realm.
Lucky for skeptical Vanessa, her bus driver (Boris Kodjoe) is handsome, sensitive, available and patient, and just happens to have a crush on her. What’s more, this knight in shining armor is a single dad and shares her interest in the arts. As you might imagine, subplots abound in this multi-tentacled soap opera.
But rather than spoil the fun, suffice to say that while building up to an eventful climax, courtesy of the Simmons clan reunion, this moving morality play seemingly bites off more than it can chew, yet convincingly addresses a myriad of relevant themes, including incest, faith, materialism, bullying, trust and domestic violence, all betwixt and between Madea and Joe’s irreverent outbursts.
The film peaks with platitude-filled soliloquies delivered by Cicely Tyson and Maya Angelou at the big reunion which was shot on the site of an actual slave plantation now owned by Tyler Perry. The sobering significance of this chosen locale is not likely to be lost on those seriously contemplating the source of all the dysfunction just witnessed on the screen. The sweeping cinematography of the historic setting underscores the points made by the revered family matriarchs as they share their sage insights and tie-up all the loose-ends.
A Tyler Perry tour de force!

PG-13 for sexuality, mature themes, domestic violence and drug references.
Running time: 107 minutes
Studio: Lions Gate Films

Take My Eyes (Te Doy Mis Ojos)
••••

Feminist Melodrama Seriously Addresses Battered Women’s Syndrome

For some reason, Pilar (Laia Marull) decides that this is the last straw when her abusive husband, Antonio (Luis Tosar), flies into a rage, leaving her bloody and beaten once again. The battered housewife, her young son, Juan (Nicolas Fernandez Luna) in tow, escapes in the middle of the wintry night, wearing only slippers and the clothes on their backs.
The two take the bus to the home of her supportive sister, Ana (Candela Pena), who offers not only to protect them with the help of her fiance, but to put them up for as long as needed. This, despite the fact that she and her beau have just announced their engagement and are busy making preparations for an elaborate wedding.
Understanding that it is imperative that she move on, a grateful Pilar sets about starting over, and starts by volunteering at a museum. But guess who soon starts stalking her, a suddenly very apologetic Antonio, begging for forgiveness and promising never to hit her again.
Initially, Pilar resists her ex’s overtures at reconciliation, especially because her sister prophetically reminds her that a man who could do that to her once doesn’t love her, and could do it again, if afforded the opportunity. So the simple question at the center of Take My Eyes is why so many battered wives go back for more punishment.
This female empowerment flick was written and directed by Iciar Bollain, who is adept at presenting an emotionally-conflicted heroine who is torn between not wanting to be a victim, and a fantasy about finally having a perfect family with her husband and son. And after Antonio undergoes anger management therapy and announces that he’s learned to control his penchant for domestic abuse, Pilar makes the ill-advised decision to give her nine-year marriage just one more chance.
In this film,set in the scenic Spanish city of Toledo, director Bollain does a magnificent job of contrasting the wide-open, generous panoramas provided by the breathtaking backdrop with the never ending, claustrophobic nightmare of a protagonist too gripped with fear to appreciate her surroundings. Alternately suspenseful, steamy and shocking, Take My Eyes is an absorbing psychological thriller, ala Hitchcock, which thoroughly entertains while simultaneously delivering its subtle feminist message .                               

Unrated
In Spanish with subtitles
Running time: 109 minutes
Studio: New Yorker Films

Trudell
••••

Reverential Bio-Pic Revisits Revolutionary Native-American Activist

Born in 1946 on an Indian reservation in Omaha, NE, John Trudell took an unorthodox route to becoming a revolutionary. For before he became Chairman of the American Indian Movement in the Sixties, he did two tours of duty in Vietnam. But the vet soured on the U.S. and returned to lead a red people’s takeover of Alcatraz Island outside of San Francisco.
Trudell takes an essentially uncritical look at the life of this charismatic activist, relying both on archival footage and on glowing accolades contained in present-day interviews by the likes of Robert Redford, Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Val Kilmer, and the Indigo Girls. You are likely to enjoy this inflammatory documentary to the extent that you are inclined to indict this country for the miserable plight of most Native-Americans.
Its subject exhibits a quiet confidence and clarity of thought as he indicts the United States at every turn. “The great lie is that America represents civilization, and that it is good for us,” he argues at one point, adding, “If this is the land of the free, where all men are created equal, then we want to know why that doesn’t apply to us.”
He also criticizes Western culture for “taking more from the Earth than you need,” and compares expecting Native-Americans to celebrate Columbus Day to expecting white people to celebrate 9-11. To this day, Trudell remains faithful to his radical philosophy, despite the fact that so many of his radical comrades, even his pregnant wife and three children, died under suspicious circumstances during the FBI COINTELPRO program’s reign of terror.
He refuses to capitulate, defiantly asserting that “Military and economic systems are systems of authority, not power. Power is really about our relationship to life.” A bittersweet bio-pic which presents an articulate, defiant and sensitive soul who promises to remain committed to resistance till he draws his last breath.      

Unrated
Running time: 75 minutes
Studio: Balcony Releasing

V for Vendetta
••••
Spirit of Guy Fawkes Invoked in Subversive Sci-Fi Flick

While most Americans have probably never heard of Guy “Guido” Fawkes (1570-1606), he has long been an infamous character in the annals of English history. This former soldier was the munitions mastermind behind the foiled Gunpowder Plot intended to assassinate King James I and all the members of Parliament on Nov. 5th, 1606. However, he was arrested early that same morning in the bowels of the House of Lords just as he was about to detonate the two and one-half tons of explosives he and his co-conspirators had hidden in a cellar.
Although Fawkes was summarily hanged, drawn and quartered on Jan. 31 of the following year, his legend has nonetheless endured. Every Nov. 5th, citizens all across, not only the United Kingdom, but New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and Newfoundland celebrate Guy Fawkes Night by burning his figure in effigy. As they stoke the flames of the bonfire, they chant a popular rhyme which begins: “Remember, remember, the 5th of November, gunpowder, treason and plot…”
You might also like to know that when this tradition began, people referred to the dummy on the pyre as a “Guy.” This, ultimately, gave rise to today’s colloquial use of “guy” in lower case to mean an average person.
Recently voted as one the 100 Greatest Britons of all time in a poll conducted by the BBC, Fawkes has been memorialized as a cultural folk hero in many a ballad, such as John Lennon’s “Remember’ which features a tremendous explosion following its last line, “Remember the 5th of November.” Meanwhile, The Smiths inscribed the phrase “Guy Fawkes was a genius.” Right into the vinyl of their album titled “The Queen Is Dead.”
The reason I decided to start this review with a sidebar brushing up on British history is because a certain amount of background material is probably necessary in order to appreciate the picture fully. That being said, V for Vendetta represents one of the most subtly subversive sci-fi flicks ever to come out of Hollywood.
Based on the illustrated DC Comic series of the same name by Alan Moore and David Lloyd, it was adapted to the big screen by the Wachowski Brothers of the Matrix franchise fame. But the movie marks the impressive directorial debut of James McTeigue who previously worked as the assistant director on all three installments of the Matrix trilogy.
Set in the not too distant future, the film unfolds in a rather shadowy England beset by a totalitarian repression of Orwellian dimensions. Subjected to the constant surveillance of Big Brother-like scrutiny, the entire populace has seemingly been conditioned to kowtow to Chancellor Sutler (John Hurt), an despicable despot who rules with an iron fist.
We learn that this master manipulator’s regime achieved such absolute power by promising protection from the threat of terrorism in return for the citizenry’s surrender of civil rights. Sound familiar? This is the first of a flurry of patent parallels the picture presents between the Sutler regime and the Bush administration. 
In any case, hope for humanity rests with V (Hugo Weaving), a swashbuckling swordsman who lives in a subterranean hideaway. Like a cross between Zorro and The Joker this wisecracking avenger always wears a Guy Fawkes mask and leaves a “V” instead of a “Z” behind as a calling card after dispatching bad guys.
He exhibits a good sense of humor despite having been burned beyond recognition by government researchers in a badly botched scientific experiment. Thus, this rebel without an epidermis is inclined to droll exchanges such as this one with a detective investigating a murder:

Detective: Did you have anything to do with it?
V: Yes, I killed him.
Detective: Are you going to kill more people?
V: Yes.

A freedom-fighter with a master plan, ala the idol whose countenance covers his scarred face, his aim is to liberate the masses by blowing up Parliament, and on November 5th, of course. In quest of this doomsday scenario, our hero finds a sidekick/love interest of sorts in Evey (Natalie Portman), a beautiful, but badly-brainwashed clerk employed by the mind-controlling British Television Network. But when V saves her from a brutal beating at the hands of the thought police, Evey gets her start on the road to recovery.
Fans of The Matrix expecting state-of-the-art fight sequences will undoubtedly walk away from this relatively cerebral adventure disappointed, for this is a flick where preachy dialogue, social statements and character development have been exalted at the expense of balls-out action and technical wizardry. Furthermore, since V for Vendetta transparently expects the audience to root for a protagonist’s with an anti-establishment message on a variety of today’s hot-button issues, be prepared to check your politics at the door, at least if you tend to lean to the right of center.
Forget the Ides of March, beware the 5th of November.

Rated R for profanity and graphic violence.
Running time: 106 minutes
Studio: Warner Brothers