A for Awful, no remnants of Alan Moore's masterwork in "this vicious cabaret"

Rating: 2/10 (28 July 2006)

Complete joke. If people would read more they would know that this was a bastardized, modernized, canonized version of a great work by the finest author of graphic novels of the last twenty-five years (sorry Frank Miller).
All the layered stories and symbolism that made the book such a joy have been removed and turned into a more cookie-cutter, user-friendly action flick that promoted stylized violence over stylized plot. That is it's biggest fault. Characters thrown around and placed wherever for whatever reason (evey never even meets Gordon until halfway through the book).
V was not a freedom fighter, he openly admits in the book that he has turned from that brand of justice, and is in fact, an anarchist. Changing your view a little? This provided so much more depth to the dialogs in the book and made v into more of a character than a run-of-the-mill "I been done wrong by my gov't so now I'm gonna fight for FREEDOM!" Prothero's doll burning (which was way cooler and way funnier than 'v shows up, hello commander, kills him), Beethoven's fifth (da da da dum, is morse code for V), the subplot of almond's widow as she ends up gunning down Mr. Susan (not Sutler!) the Leader. It goes on and on.
And the stuff that wasn't in the book, the count of monte cristo? An SNL type show where the audience is held at gunpoint? Where the he11 did this come from? It neither helped the ideals nor had the amount of symbolism that Moore included is his original. And when it comes to Moore, don't mess with perfection.
Avoiding the political slant, in which this was obviously and shamelessly pointed toward current events, the book was anarchy-vs-totalitarianism. This was material that was dated, but the screen writers saw a story that at it's bone was man vs gov't and decided they could twist a story that in all reality has nothing to do with current events and keep alive a spirit that was never there to begin with.
Exploited violence with a paper thin plot so overdone over the years it's a surprise it hasn't torn yet. Read the book, shun this disgrace of a film. Nothing more than a "vicious cabaret" (don't get it? Read the #@%$! book!)
England prevails, this doesn't.