This world that I am a part of that I helped shaped will come to an end tonight with me

Rating: 8/10 (1 April 2006)

****SPOILERS**** Futuristic drama set in 2020 Great Britian about a totalitarian government being confronted by a dark clothed freedom fighter determined to bring it down that it ends up costing him his life. Planing to make himself and intentions known to the British people on midnight November 5, V, Hugo Weaving, first rescues young British national TV employee Evey, Natalie Portman, from two government security men who are about to have her arrested for being outside on the street after curfew.
V takes Evey with him onto a London rooftop as the Old Baily Building in London is blown to pieces by explosives that he planted there to the music of Tchaikovsky's 1812 overture. That results in the British dictator Chancellor Adam Sutler,John Hurt, having a fit ordering his entire army of security, as well as the British military, to find who ever did it and then bring him to justice; Which is a kangaroo trial conducted by the state without a jury.
The next day V breaks into the government controlled TV studio in London and after dispatching a squad of security men goes on the air telling the Britsh people that he'll be at war with Sutler's regime with the final reckoning coming next November 5 "Guy Fawkes Day". It's then when he'll destroy the British Parliament Building that Fawkes attempted, but failed, to do back in 1605.
The movie "V for Vendetta" mirrors what's happening now in the world with terrorism as the weapon of choice by the likes of Osama Bin-Ladin & Co. and has V using these same hit-and-run tactics against the British Government that he feels has betrayed and enslaved the British people. Enormously successful in his battle against the Sutler regime V nevertheless is a one man army with no one, but Evey, joining him in his fight. Which makes him a bit more then just a human being but someone with superhuman powers who can take on dozens of opponents and defeat them without as much as breaking into a sweat.
We get to know V's background in a number of flashbacks that indicate that he was the subject of a government experiment that went wrong that left him scared for life. Wearing a Guy Fawkes mask and Zorro-like hat V strikes us as someone out of the 18th not 21th century. We also get some idea of how a totalitarian regime like Adam Sutler's took over the government with flashbacks about a deadly biological attack on Britian that resulted in over 100,000 deaths. Were also given the impression that it was the Sutler Regime itself that engineered that attack, making it look like it was the work of Islamic terrorists, in order to get the British people through their representatives in the Parliament to give up their rights and make Sutler a total dictator who answers to no one and to no laws.
As November 5 gets closer by the day It's not V but Chancellor Sutler and his underlings who start to panic as the mysterious masked maestro knocks off key members of his regime including the "Voice of London" Lewis Profhero,Roger Allen,who we later find out was the commandant of a brutal government concentration camp where V was later almost killed in a chemical explosion. Using the London tube, or subway, V has a plan to use a train-load of explosives that will go under the Parliament Building at precisely midnight November 5 and blow the place straight to hell but Sutler won't be there. He's deposed by his handlers lead by the secretive behind the scenes Cheedy, Tim Pigoff-Smith, who together with his henchmen ends up confronting V in a battle that the result will be the future course of Britsh, as well as American and world, history.
Thought-provoking film with a really surprise ending, that takes up the movies last fifteen or so minutes, that has you thinking about that famous saying about Freedom & Equality; "Freedom is not Free and all men are not Equal". That so perfectly describes the movies sheep-like and ignorant British people in the quotes beginning statement and the courageous and principled masked avenger and freedom fighter V for Vendetta in the quotes end.