It's easy to see how V, as a letter, as a symbol, can represent and inspire an uprising of citizen revolt. Victory. Vindication. Valour. These are the codes that the depressed people of a future totalitarian society aspire to and they also define the title character who stirs them to action. The graphical quality of the letter itself can resemble two arms, defiantly reaching for the heavens. But a revolution can live or die by the double-edged sword it employs; violence can pollute a cause and turn its participants into self-defeating Vigilanties.

That letter is just one of the symbols in "V for Vendetta", which is a movie filled with such symbols, some subtle and some painfully obvious, in a film that never cowers from shedding light on that double-edged sword.

In the near future, the people are oppressed by their government. A mysterious masked man begins to perform a series of symbolic bombings. He wants to frighten the figureheads in power who damaged him and countless others. Most of all, he wants to awaken the slumbering citizenry. One of these citizens is a young woman who has suffered a similar series of misfortunes; only for her, these tragedies have made her more scared and passive. The two characters begin a relationship that forever changes them both.

This is a tricky film. It's a comic book rendering dealing with current political issues that pervade our daily news at this very moment. And it plays as a definite indictment of George Bush and his policies. There are many directions something like this can take, and almost all of them are dangerous. It could play as a pretentious social commentary. Or it could play as a shallow, "Death Wish" clone. But "V for Vendetta" seems to be fully aware of these potential pitfalls; in fact, it drives through these dangers head on. After all, this movie is about teetering on the edge of extremity. When you feel, early on, that the film is heading in the wrong direction, it surprises you by truly committing to these morally complex and ambiguous themes.

These themes expand as the film moves along. Half way through, when the young woman is set up, shaven, starved, interrogated and broken down by V, everything begins to come together. When she comes out of her isolation, she is reborn and possessed with a new sense of purpose. And all of a sudden, the notions the film has set up come together and allow the viewer to achieve clarity at the same moment she does.

Gay bashing, war mongering and media manipulation are just a few of the issues spoken about in this sometimes overly ambitious film. It asks difficult questions and provides no easy answers. And, all the while, it never fails to entertain. The film is both timeless and timely, as it echoes "The Count of Monte Cristo", the very best of modern comic-book adaptations and current political events. First-time director James McTeigue (who served as the first assistant director on "The Matrix" trilogy) embraces the complexities of the Warchowski Brothers' stunning, impossibly realized screenplay. The delicate look of the film conveys a futuristic comic-book environment that feels both theatrical and harshly realistic.

I enjoyed the danger of the film, not just in the difficult themes it explores, but in the way it consistently threatens to stumble into silly parody and then, miraculously, saves itself and stuns you. A-