Starring: Hugo Weaving, Natalie Portman, Rupert Graves (I)

7 out of 10 stars: A noted historian once wrote, "An attraction to anarchy is the ultimate indulgence of a bourgeois culture" and, if that's true, then V for Vendetta is one of the first bon-bons of our post-9-11 society.

There are a lot of things that make me uncomfortable, uneasy, about this movie. Mostly I dislike the fence it's making me sit on. I dislike it because it's such a shrieking diatribe. I can't imagine what would occur if a film came out with a conservative stance that is as nakedly aggressive as this one. But I'm also glad that it exists because it, like Fahrenheit 9-11, or a million different websites, is resounding evidence that we do not live in the kind of society it pillories. V also glamorizes terrorism in that glossy, hip Hollywood way, which makes me sick, because I think it's wrong to glamorize their methods and means and yet I think it's healthy because not introducing terrorists into a venue such as this gives them a kind of power as well. In many ways the heroic characterization that's used deflates the notion that the vigilantism used is, indeed, heroic.

The graphic novel upon which this film was based was written by Alan Moore, celebrated crank and creator of "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen," "The Watchmen" (my personal favorite of his) and "From Hell." Moore is one of those snide, Ayn Randian fascists who is a snide, Ayn Randian fascist because he's pretty brilliant and he secretly believes he's better than everyone else because he's probably usually smarter than everyone else. He can make the decisions for righteousness and justice, thank you, not the sniveling lot in power. And his ultimate manifestation is in "V" the masked protagonist in the graphic novel and the movie.

Moore wrote V for Vendetta in 1988 (he'd started it seven years earlier) and it does have its prescient aspects. It takes place after an unnamed war started by the United States has led to nuclear devastation and biological warfare. England is not unscathed but it's not the festering "leper colony" that America has become. In the wake of the strife a new government has taken hold of Britain, a totalitarian government that has turned the island into a police state. They round up the undesirables and place them in a camp called Larkhill. They begin to perform genetic research and biological experimentation upon the prisoners, starting with the usual first targets of such regimes: intellectuals, homosexuals, foreigners.

V, played by Hugo Weaving (at least it's his voice most of the time), is one of the only surviving products of said experiments. Because of some unnamed quirk of his fated cell structure V survives the hideous trial when all the others die, though his face is, we're led to assume, hideously deformed as he wears a Guy Fawkes mask the entire time. When we meet V, through the eyes of Evey, a young girl he's saved (played quite well by Natalie Portman); he's one of those omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, mask-wearing, knife-wielding, Renaissance-man characters that people hate so much in serial killer movies but accept in a movie such as this.

He shields Evey but also uses her too. Her entry-level position in the national television studio furthers V's hopes of spreading his ideals. His ideals seem to be centered around old movies, old music, and fusty old notions of freedom having mostly to do with settling old scores and blowing up buildings. V does this with a frightening efficiency and flare, slowly drawing Evey into his world while threatening the corridors of power right up to the fearful leader, Adam Sutler, played with Richard the Third gusto by John Hurt.

Perhaps one of the biggest mistakes is that they've tried to tone down the totalitarian state that Britain was in Moore's novel by making Sutler, a politician from the late -30s Hitler mold. He's either bellowing or he's being lampooned. He's rather unlike the slick, amoral Machiavellian schemers of Moore's novel (perhaps the worst offender, a woman named Helen Heyer, is completely missing). Since he's either shrieking or the object of dumb show he's hardly a match for an omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, mask-wearing, knife-wielding Renaissance man with super genes.

Another important difference, one that the filmmakers seemed unable to resist, was the inclusion of a gay friend of Evey's, played by Stephen Fry. Fry's character, Dietrich, whom in the book becomes Evey's lover, actually makes fun of Sutler on national TV, later proclaiming it will make him even more famous. In Moore's novel such a thing would have been unthinkable.

Perhaps it's why Moore denounced the screenplay adaptation ("rubbish") and the film ("knowingly stolen from me"). Or perhaps he's just a crank, it's hard to tell.

All of this is also connected to an English tradition and some English history. It involves Guy Fawkes and the plot to blow up Parliament and King James 1 in 1605. Fawkes and twelve other conspirators carted 36 barrels of gunpowder in a cellar under the House of Lords, hoping to change the policy towards Catholics by eradicating the King and most of the Court. The plot failed and Guy Fawkes, who was caught in the cellar, and several others were captured, tortured, and drawn and quartered (which involved disemboweling him while still alive; in the movie Fawkes gets off easy and is hung). The British still celebrate Guy Fawkes day, burning the traitor to the crown in effigy and even creating a lovely bit of doggerel for the occasion "Remember, remember the 5th of November, the gunpowder, treason, and plot. I can think of no reason, the gunpowder treason should ever be forgot."

Not many Americans are familiar with Guy Fawkes day, which is largely an excuse for lighting off fireworks in England. In V for Vendetta it's the basis of a whole ethos; if you don't like your government, blow it up! (The Declaration of Independece suggests a much more civil method of dissassociation.) Thus Warner Bros. was all set to release this film last fall, on November the 5th, of all days, but blinked and moved the release after the London train bombings.

At the beginning of the film V blows up the Old Bailey, a seat of justice, with the promise that he'll be blowing up Parliament the next year (just like Guy!). As V becomes more fearless, sending out a defiant message on the nationally-run television channel, the public begins to rally around him (not like Guy at all!). He has transcended his act of revenge and become about an idea. People everywhere, in a bit of a Spartacus-homage, begin ot don Guy Fawkes masks. V represents Freedom! Yes, another word used by both sides of the political spectrum, often with ill effects.

But, perhaps the biggest reason that V for Vendetta makes me uneasy is that there is an undeniable attraction to V and his rebellion, that kind of nihilistic, lost-cause allure that holds such sway with youth and people prone to melancholy. It's particularly true when it's presented as gorgeously as it is here by director James McTiegue (a second unit director on the Matrix movies) and cinematographer Adrian Biddle (his last film as he died at 53 of a heart attack, it's dedicated to him). Yes, it's terrorism, all right, but it's cloaked in the guise of a omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, mask-wearing, knife-wielding, Renaissance man with super genes. This kind of infantile, comic book version of terrorism is the only way to make it palletable, attractive. Both Moore and the Wachowskis are known to be complete control freaks. Anarchy is about the last thing they could stand in real life. Let's see them get a computer virus, or find out their bank account has been wiped out, and see how appreciative they are of tearing the system down.

But that's what movies are for, to live out fantasies. It's a luxury to live in a free society that allows such productions and dabble, in the abstract, with the thought of utter anarchy; V for Vendetta is the proof that we are.