Holy crap.

I know what you’re thinking and, you’re right, I never start my reviews this way. But, please, trust me, when thinking about “V for Vendetta,” the initial words leaving your mouth as the curtain closes will be something strikingly similar. And that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to make this exclamation in praise. In fact, said reaction could go either way, positive or negative. But, rest assured, you will have an opinion, a strong one, a loud one, and more than likely you’ll state it to everyone just as soon as you possibly can.

For the record, my exclamation is in praise. High praise. Effusive even. Without a doubt, “V for Vendetta” is the single ballsiest major studio motion picture of this young millenium. Hidden behind a façade shaded in the cartoon features of a graphic novel (i.e. comic book), this is a futuristic action-thriller where the hero is, as you probably know by now, a terrorist. Not just any terrorist, but one who believes in his motives completely, tries to indoctrinate others to his cause, kills because he wants to and, just in case you hadn’t gotten the point, likes to blow things up spectacularly.

Granted, he’s also insane, not exactly the nicest guy in the world, has a moral temperature that’s a bit fuzzy, seems to enjoy torturing people and loves using v-flavored verbal alliteration. He is as complicated and conflicted a character we’ve seen in ages, alternately oft-putting and enthralling in almost equal measures.

But here’s the thing guaranteed to infuriate every right-wing ultra-conservative religiously intolerant person in America: V, for all his faults and misguided revenge-fueled fantasies, is right.

Right about what, you ask? Well, in the world of this movie, he’s right about the fact that England has become an intolerant wasteland ruled by a murderous despot intent on making sure the only choices citizens have to make are the ones that agree completely with his government’s. The new question is, even if V’s points are all valid and England has indeed become a Nazi’s nirvana, are his methods remotely conscionable? More so, in a world dealing with issues regarding a myriad of things eerily similar to those in the film, is raising up a terrorist as a hero something audiences should take the time to consider?

Well, if you’re turned off by any of this before even seeing the film, consider this: The series of graphic novels co-created by author Alan Moore and illustrator David Lloyd was first published in 1981, a full quarter century ago. The issues raised inside spoke about hate crimes, religious freedoms, government surveillance, free speech, conservative influences on society and a population’s willingness to look the other way when war looms scarily on the horizon. It spoke of fascism, intolerance, bigotry and fanaticism, of battles fought on distant shores and countries dealing with the results of foreign dependence on electricity and supplies vital to their domination in the world. Any of this sound familiar?

For those that want me to not talk about current political realities and just focus on the movie, “V for Vendetta” is still a slam-dunk. Starring a dazzling Natalie Portman (“The Closer”) as a young woman who’s eyes are opened by a madman, Stephen Rea (“The Crying Game”) as a detective looking for a truth he might not want to find, John Hurt (“Love and Death on Long Island”) as a dictator mad with power and Hugo Weaving (“The Lord of the Rings” trilogy) as the mysterious and vengeful masked marauder V, this is a movie made with so much intelligence, energy, passion and majesty a person has to deliberately want to be unimpressed to not at least tip their hat to it. Masterfully adapted by The Wachowski Brothers (“The Matrix” trilogy) and firmly directed by newcomer James McTeigue (assistant director on “Star Wars Episode II – Attack of the Clones”), this is easily one of the best sci-fi action experiences of this, or any other, year.

Some of it is a little silly. The Wachoski’s and McTeigue try to one-up their famous Bullet Time sequences from “The Matrix” by adding some juvenile effects to V’s knife throwing skills, and there are plenty of coincidences going on inside the script that if the whole wasn’t so compelling would be worthy of ridicule. Some of the flashbacks revealing characters’ back-stories are jarring, while many of the visual effects are no where near as impressive as I really felt they should have been.

None of it matters, though, because the majority of the script is fantastic. The Wachowski’s go for the jugular, pushing the limits of the tale to their breaking point and forcing audiences to assess, not only the characters in the film, but their own personal beliefs regarding right, wrong and the extent citizens have in order to make sure their government’s checks are in keeping an eye on their balances. It is a meditative masterpiece, kinetically compelling from beginning to end refusing to paint in candy-colored mosaics. Most of the villains are not complete monsters, the hero isn’t a saint and the woman taking it all in makes choices sure to perplex an already uneasy audience. It is a fantastic, thought-provoking roller coaster ride set inside a world that looks remarkably like the one we’re in now, and as such “V for Vendetta” takes on a life unlike anything else in multiplexes today.

What makes this special, however, is the unflinching finger The Wachowski’s and McTeigue point at the one’s most responsible for the mess everyone in the film finds themselves in. That finger, pointed much like Uncle Sam asking for a country’s assistance, is directed at us; at our willingness to lay down freedoms in the face of terror, our desire to look the other way and let the government take everyday decisions away from us, our indifference when the right to say what we want even when it disagrees with the majority slowly vanishes into the night air.

The cold hard fact is, terrorism, as nasty as that word has become, is a definition that can only be defined by the looking glass of history. In 1776 a group of colonists were considered terrorists by the British government, today we look upon them all as patriotic heroes. Does this mean anything? I’m not sure. The terrorists of today kill women and children, innocent and guilty, soldier and shop owner alike without any regards whatsoever. V, in the world of the movie, never crosses that line. His vengeance is directed against the government and the government alone, leaving civilians at peace while brutally dispatching any of those wearing the uniform of the ruling class he’s sworn to dismantle.

I’m through stating personal politics. They do not really have any place when looking at this movie as a whole. The point is that “V for Vendetta” is a bold, unflinching portrait of a world we might not want to look at too closely. A world where the sights and sounds are so harsh and hard they make us cringe and weep for all we’ve suffered and lost. A world where right and wrong, Left and Right, liberal and conservative no longer matter when the choice to be one or the other no longer exists. A world, that may look like the future, smell like the future, even call itself the future, but isn’t the future at all.

Film Rating: êêêê  (out of 4)