Great movie! (I was especially moved at the "universal mask" theme of the movie.)

I loved Hugo Weaving's diction (stop that snickering...) and I always enjoy watching Natalie Portman doing - well, anything (watching paint dry, shopping, acting, sleeping... yeah (sigh).).

But I hate the actual plot of the movie, the idea that social revolution is equivalent to a hero blowing stuff up so that (eventually) all the sheeple could come out and see him in person (on a certain day) while a cordon of riotcops festooned with megaweapons glower at them - without their actually using the weapons to mow down a surplus quantity of the rebellious sheeple. The hole in the plot there is big enough for the vehicle which actually delivers the final blow.

Meanwhile, the actual overthrow of dictatorship is the release of fear in one's own heart - the facing, and vanquishing, of the little 'cop' in your own head that says you cannot do this, you cannot get away with that, you'd better just stay in line, etc. I'll admit that there is a role for the propaganda of the deed in teaching people to distrust that little cop, but when the deed has been done, and done, and done again, it is time to create some new propaganda. A new kind of deed. A new way to rebel, to assert your own autonomy and organize, with your own community, your own life.

And that is always - ALWAYS - predicated on the needs of the community, not the needs of the would-be hero. In other words, to have a social revolution you have to build communities, societies, which have their own explicit interests in opposition to the oppression they face. And those societies then will do the work, not the hero. Mass action is not an individual sport.

But this movie has no life, no community, no animus other than personal revenge. Revenge for what, we never know exactly. Horrible torture is implied. Rigid dictatorship is shown. There is however no community of the people who suffer this injustice; there is no life in the streets. The sheeple are literally audience members sitting in their living rooms in twos and threes, filmed from the general area of their telescreens (as their oppressors might see them). Their one role in the movie is to (eventually) cheer and become a mass, a crowd moving toward a government building whose occupants have already been killed elsewhere. All that remains opposed to them is the hollow shell of the men in black, festooned with weapons they are apparently afraid to fire. Because the few men who could order the weaponry fired, are already conveniently dead.

I'd recommend the actual comic instead, available at Danger Room. Much less money for much more story. But of course, you'll have to get the poster of the movie. It's got Natalie on it, after all!