By Megan Basham - Townhall.com Film Critic

I have seen the terrorist, and he is me. And you. And all of us. So says Evey (Natalie Portman), an acolyte of V (Hugh Weaving), the swashbuckling savior of future England who disguises himself as Guy Fawkes.

But don’t worry, because being a terrorist is now a good thing. As we’ve been told by the media, one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter…or masked superhero as the case may be.
 
In fact, according to The New York Daily News’ critic, Jaimi Bernard, even the term “suicide bombing” is now relative. “One person’s idea of social liberation through symbolic fireworks is another person’s suicide bombing,” she insists in her review of V for Vendetta.
 
So even though V threatens to detonate a load of explosives strapped to his chest, killing dozens of innocent people at the BBC (oh, excuse me, BFC) if they don’t give him air-time, just think of him as Batman — a little overly-dramatic and conflicted perhaps, but also sexy and an undeniable force for good.

I can see him this way because of all the Wachowski Brothers have taught me. My eyes have been opened, and I am no longer an automaton of the Right-wing religious-military-industrial complex.

Thanks to this “parable about terrorism and totalitarianism” (Roger Ebert) I have been “prodded to think” (The San Francisco Chronicle). And I now think that the Bush administration blew up the twin towers and tried to blow up two other U.S. targets on 9/11 in order to scare Americans into giving them more power. I think that conservatives hate art, literature, and music—especially jazz music—and want to lock it all away because, well, they’re just mean like that.
 
I think that Catholics are in league with Republicans, and that together it is they, and not radical Islamists, who would like to exterminate all homosexuals and execute anyone that produces material critical of the Church-State. I think it is Christians who persecute people for reading the Koran and not Muslims who persecute people for reading the Bible.

I think that the West’s military personnel are the ones who place hoods over innocent people’s heads then mercilessly torture and kill them, and that broadcasts of Islamo-fascists doing so are so much laughable propaganda.
 
But most of all, in true V style, I think that documents, like buildings, are only symbols, and that burning them can change the world. Therefore, I propose that we storm the National Archives and torch the Constitution—the document responsible for unleashing the Great Evil that is America.

After all, that’s what the Wachowskis want, isn’t it? When [spoiler alert] the English masses gather and cheer as Parliament, that British symbol of representative government burns, aren’t we too supposed to cheer? Aren’t we supposed to want to run out of theater ready to don our Osama Bin Laden masks, ready to confront the world’s biggest terrorist mastermind on the White House lawn?

Oh, but wait, the movie is “dystopian” and therefore has nothing to do with current events. The “yellow-alerts” the vile dictator employs are a coincidence. The campy television show in which vaudevillian Al Qaeda operatives torture busty blondes, suggesting that the threat of terror is as fictional as it is ridiculous, means nothing.  The balding talk show host with a pill-popping problem isn’t intended to smear a real person.
 
And the fact that the script takes glee in constantly referring to the “former United States of America” and “their war” that left them “the world’s leper colony?” Umm, okay, that’s a little hard to explain…let’s just call that comic justice.

I could go into more detail, but really, there is no point. The fact the film’s release had to be postponed when V’s final heroic act of loading explosives onto a subway car in the London underground proved too realistic illustrates how in-sync the Wachowski’s are with actual terrorists. Forget not being worth the price of admission, this ode to Al Zarqawi and his ilk certainly wasn’t worth the price of pretty Miss Portman’s flowing mane of chestnut hair.

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I highly, highly disagree with everything this author says about the new movie “V for Vendetta.” As one who recently watched the movie and one who is a right-wing conservative, I have to denounce this whole article.

First, I’d like to explain away the comment about the “…glee in constantly referring to the former United States of America.” The growing conflict in the movie had to have a beginning, whether most people like that beginning or not. It is a logical beginning, having the War on Terrorism get out of hand and Britain cracking down on outlaws in what seems to be a new, dictatorship or police state. This in only a logical scenario, as mass bombing or nuclear explosions in any country would yield marshall law.

Second, I’d like to argue against the sarcastic comments: “But most of all, in true V style, I think that documents, like buildings, are only symbols, and that burning them can change the world. Therefore, I propose that we storm the National Archives and torch the Constitution—the document responsible for unleashing the Great Evil that is America.” The author again, takes the movie out of context in this instance, believing “V” is leading us to a mindset of destroying national symbols in an effort to make change. This scenario is real, and it has happened before. For example, colonists dropped large shipments of tea into Boston Harbor to protest tax policies and injustice of Great Britain in the 1770’s. Why did the colonists choose tea to drop overboard? Because tea was a great symbol of British economic strength. I have no doubt if someone destroyed the White House on national TV, it would definately make some sort of statement.

Third, I would like to argue away with what this author is communicating about how “V” was glorifying terrorism. In my opinion, “V” did not glorify terrorism one bit. First, Britain was portrayed as a fascist regime. Second, the people had no rights, including the right to free speech (a comedian was arrested, beaten, and killed for making fun of the dictator). The government also demonstrated the following characteristics: widespread abuse of power by government officials, thought control, the torture of prisoners, the lack of lawful due process, chemical testing on their own people, and many other types of abuse. These abuses are not right and violate the human rights of individuals. Therefore, it was in the best interest of “V” and anyone who joined him to take up arms against their government.

The Declaration of Independence states:

But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.

This duty, to provide a new guard for the future security of Britian, was what “V” was trying to do in the movie. If the author of the above article could’ve looked at the context of the movie in a logical manner, the author might have come to a different conclusion. However, they did not look at history, nor the context in which the screenplay was written. In my opinion, the author of the above article was dead wrong about the new movie “V for Vendetta.”

If my country would massively violate all rights of the citizenry, denounce our constitution, arrest and kill all gays and muslims, suppress my right to free speech, burn and destroy books and music, and do all the other things the British government did in the movie, I would gladly take up arms against those abuses.

V for Vendetta