V For Vendetta is a movie made in 2005 by director James McTeigue and written by Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski. It stars Hugo Weaving as the character V and is produced by such people as Jessica Alan and Grant Hill. If you haven’t guessed by now I am getting to a theme surrounding the making of this movie. V For Vendetta is based on a graphic novel written by Alan Moore and illustrated by David Lloyd and the screenplay was adapted by many of the same people that brought the Matrix movies to the screen. With an imagination like that it is no wonder that V For Vendetta is a visual masterpiece even if it lacks a little in the acting and plot departments. There are some basic differences between the original graphic novel and the movie V For Vendetta that may actually confuse some of the fans of the graphic novel. Most notably the main character V in the graphic novel is out to cause anarchy against the government while the character of V in the movie V For Vendetta is looking for justice. This causes there to be many fundamental differences between the source and the movie that have caused many fans of the graphic novel to dismiss the movie completely. But the movie did do decent at the box office and it still remains as a wonderful movie to watch.

V For Vendetta is a story set in the future Great Britain where threats of mass terrorism promise to undermine British society. Adam Sutler, played by John Hurt, uses this fear and paranoia as a chance to gain complete power in Great Britain and he turns it into a police state. There are torture jails set up all over Great Britain and soon people are being imprisoned and tortured for no reason. One of those wrongly imprisoned is a man named William Rookwood who, when he is no longer imprisoned, decides to strike back at the oppressive government and dons a mask that is the face of past anarchist Guy Fawkes and begins to take revenge on those that imprisoned and tortured him. In the process of blowing up a government building he rescues a girl named Evey, played by Natalie Portman, and she becomes his ally when she finds out that she has more in common with V than she thought she did or would ever want to. V becomes labeled a terrorist by the government and Inspector Finch, played by Stephen Rea, is determined to find V and stop him. But as Finch gets deeper into his investigation he starts to question whether or not he is on the right side of this fight. Soon V has succeeded in taking over the government owned television airwaves and urges all of the people of Britain to join him on November 5, which he calls Guy Fawkes Day, and watch as he blows up Parliament and puts an end to the government’s tyranny.

V For Vendetta is filled with imagery and subplots that carry the movie to its conclusion but sometimes those subplots seem to get lost on the way to the end of the movie. The intention is great but perhaps the decision to turn V into a crusader for justice instead of keeping him the anarchist that he was in the graphic novel tended to soften the plot too much and make it look almost like a bad remake of The Three Musketeers set in future Great Britain instead of the past. But it is worth seeing the movie just to watch it as the visual devices used make the movie very entertaining to watch regardless of whether or not you buy into the characters or the plot.