Dagny and I are grateful for the thorough review, JK. It prompted us to buy a copy last night and watch it ourselves. Unfortunately, the viewing consumed substantially more than the 132 minute running time as we had to continually pause the film for urgent trips to the kitchen to refill our Kool-Aid glasses. (We still have red moustaches this morning!)

Your description of "three script changes" fooled me into expecting no other blatant "different-reality" messages. Here are a couple you didn't mention: (spoilers follow but hey, it's on DVD already)

Terrorist. That's the name given, in the film, to anyone who uses violence to achieve political change. It matters not if he targets state criminals instead of civilians of a free society. Clearly, [sarcasm alert] if anyone employs such tactics against a state it is proof that the state is corrupt and tyrannical.

St. Mary's mass poisoning, Three Waters chemical attack, subway killings. These three cinematic disasters, ultimately revealed to us as the work of the totalitarian state, are obvious metaphors for 9/11, 3/11 and 7/7. It is left to viewers to make the extremely short journey to the conclusion that Bush (et al) orchestrated these real-world mass killings for the same purpose as Sutler's: To manipulate vox populi in support of the "regime."

You gave the impression that the studio required the script changes, but the actors interviewed in the "making of" bonus material are clearly the "different-reality-enabled" ones:

"I've never seen a Hollywood script that addresses the issues we're talking about today...you know, whether the threat, or the perceived threat, of terrorism or disease or anything else, justifies a diminution in civil liberties," says Stephen Fry. Rupert Graves follows with, "The fear that everybody has about terrorist attacks, and the laws being brought into effect to counter that, sometimes quite oppressive laws, it doesn't take a great leap to understand why and how a state might want a lot more control." Fry ends with, "It's obviously not about America now, or even Britain now, but nonetheless it is about those very issues and it's a marvelous thing to think that Hollywood is, again, able to do that." Let's ask the citizens of northern Israel if the terrorist threat is merely a "perception."

"V is the hero but he's not always good, and he sometimes does things that you can't possibly like because he's vengeful. Because of that it sort of taints his political idealism," says the otherwise delightful Ms. Portman. I suppose she's referring to his campaign to kill all the individuals complicit in his imprisonment and torture, and the murders of countless other victims of medical experiments. Even the ones who "didn't mean it."

"We all know that one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter," Stephen Fry says. ["If 'everyone knows' such-and-such then it ain't so, by at least ten thousand to one." - Robert A. Heinlein]

I was intrigued by the movie prior to its release, when I saw a theater poster with the quote you cited: "People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people." "How can they screw that up," I thought? Then I noticed it was by the Wachowski brothers, they of 'red pill, blue pill' epistemology. "They should get it right." After release, my sister-in-law saw the movie before us. She thought it would make us mad because, "It is portrayed in such a way that whoever's watching it can see what they want to see." Consequently we declined to contribute 20 bucks to it's creators. (Instead we gave them $16.87 for the DVD. Sigh.)

Give the film credit for being intelligent and thoughtful. It does understand that fear societies are bad. Trouble is, it sees evil in the mirror far more clearly than in, say, religious fanatics with military ordnance.

Three stars.

Obviously my review was not thoughtful or comprehensive enough to save you $16.87. I owe you lunch.

I was hoping others saw it and I cannot feign surprise that you saw what you described. Your sister-in-law is right. I realized that moonbats would also get support from the film. Watching it a second time before returning it, a few things did make me nervous.

I'm a BIG Stephen Fry fan from his Jeeves & Wooster and Blackadder days. I like his partner Hugh Laurie on “House.” But I know he's a British lefty -- no doubt he'd think the movie was about Bush. I didn't watch any of the bonus features or commentary, but yeah, Hollywood, whatever.

That it was set in Britain and that there was such homage to Orwell, made me think of the land that, under a Labour government, has disarmed its populace and is creating ID cards as we speak.

And to a certain extent, both the left and right need to be vigilant against excessive government, and know that they have the power to stop it. I see no reason, why gunpowder treason, should ever be forgot.

One quibble: the state powers use "terrorist" indiscriminately and to their advantage -- perhaps they are accusing Bush and Blair of this. But the film's hero is continually called the T-word when he is obviously not.

The other movie I saw this weekend was Disney's "The Shaggy Dog." Tim Allen was good but the politics in this soi disant "children's" movie is 100X worse than V. The hero is Allen's daughter's animal-rights-terrorist Social studies teacher. It made V seem like reading "The Weekly Standard" by comparison.

And the dog movie lacked the startling cinematography of V For Vendetta.

JK states, "But the film's hero is continually called the T-word when he is obviously not."

That V is not a terrorist is the clear conclusion that you reached and we reached. However, I found it frightening in watching the bonus material that most if not all of the people working on the film thought he WAS a terrorist. They all intended for V's morality to appear ambiguous and for his behavior to be that of a terrorist.

We'd be happy to have lunch JK, but you don't owe it to us. We wanted to see the movie even if you had panned it.

Yes, that's another thing V had going - it was fantastically entertaining to watch and the dialog was excellent for an action film.

But when is Hollywood going to make a movie about a violently discriminatory ideological movement that fails to die with the Nazis of WWII, resurrecting itself decades later to threaten the world with death and destruction on a massive scale, only to be ignored, appeased and denied by the so-called "enlightened" classes who could have stopped them at any point right up until the giant mushroom cloud appeared. Nah, Hollywood hates documentaries.

I think, jg, that's slated to come out right after the films celebrating the heroism of American troops in Iraq.

You both are making me glad I skipped the bonus material. But I might put it in the Harrison Bergeron camp, where an artist who believes in one thing ends up producing a work which perfectly undermines it.

Lastly, the film had two ideals we can share with the worst of moonbats: mistrust of government and the power of ideas.