V for Vendetta

A film set in a near-future authoritarian Britain. There is a curfew. State television is the only source, dissidents disappear, and part of the population was killed in camps. Evey is caught outside at night. A masked man saves her, and blows up a building the same night. His plan is for a year later. He intends to bring down parliament on the fifth of November and announces it on television. From there the film runs on two lines. V kills former officials one at a time; a police inspector investigating the murders finds the state's own past. What the narrative is interested in is not terror but memory: the whole thing comes out of a medical experiment carried out years earlier and covered up, and the film opens it like an investigation. There is a section in the middle. A prison cell and letters coming through a hole in the wall; it is the best written part of the film and has no direct bearing on the main plot. V's face is never seen. The whole performance is voice, posture and hands, and the mask holds one fixed expression. The actor changed after shooting began. The first left after a few weeks and Hugo Weaving took over. The source is a comic by Alan Moore and David Lloyd. Moore rejected the adaptation, asked for his name to be removed, and refused his share. After release the mask became a protest symbol in various parts of the world. The screenplay is by the Wachowskis. James McTeigue directed. Natalie Portman, Hugo Weaving, Stephen Rea, John Hurt and Stephen Fry are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes political allegory and theatrical delivery. Who it is not for: anyone looking for a clear moral; the film leaves the questioning of its hero to the audience and some of it is uncomfortable.