V for VendettaSave

A dystopian England, circa 2032. The country is ruled by Norsefire, a far-right authoritarian political party led by Chancellor Adam Sutler (John Hurt, in heavy aged prosthetics evoking 1984's Big Brother). Civil liberties have been suspended for over a decade. Homosexuality is criminalized; Muslims and other religious minorities have been disappeared into government detention camps. State media broadcasts unmitigated propaganda. The film's opening 8 minutes establish the political-allegorical world-building through a series of montage sequences depicting Norsefire's surveillance state, the disappeared populations, and the government-controlled BTN news broadcasts.

Evey Hammond (Natalie Portman) — a 22-year-old British Television Network production assistant — is walking home from work after curfew when she is detained by the Fingermen, Norsefire's secret police. The Fingermen prepare to rape her. She is rescued by V (Hugo Weaving), a masked vigilante wearing the iconic Guy Fawkes mask. V has been planning a guerrilla campaign against Norsefire for years. He brings Evey to a nearby rooftop and detonates the Old Bailey courthouse with synchronized fireworks-and-explosives — a deliberately theatrical attack timed to coincide with the date November 5 (Guy Fawkes Night, the canonical British holiday commemorating the 1605 attempted assassination of King James I).

The Norsefire government investigates V relentlessly. Chief Inspector Eric Finch (Stephen Rea) is assigned to track him. We learn through Finch's investigation that V was created by the government itself — Subject IX, a former inmate of the Larkhill detention center, where Norsefire conducted experiments on prisoners in the early 2020s. The Larkhill experiments were intended to develop biological weapons; Subject IX was one of approximately 50 test subjects. The experiments killed all the other subjects. V's mutation was the only successful outcome — he developed enhanced healing, reflexes, and pain tolerance through the genetic experimentation. The Larkhill program was canonically responsible for engineering the St. Mary's virus that killed approximately 80,000 British citizens — the staged terrorist attack that Norsefire used to justify its initial seizure of power.

Evey, having sheltered with V in his underground lair (a Victorian-themed sanctuary filled with banned books, banned art, and pre-Norsefire memorabilia), eventually becomes V's protégé. V kidnaps and tortures her himself to break her of her fear of the government — a deliberately-controversial creative choice that has been widely debated. Evey believes she is being interrogated by Norsefire's secret police for months. She is shaved bald, repeatedly subjected to mock-execution, and tortured psychologically. The interrogation breaks her psychologically; she emerges with a fundamentally-different relationship to fear. She reveals at the end of the torture sequence that V was her interrogator the entire time. The choice was Wachowski-directors' deliberate creative interpretation of Alan Moore's canonical V-trains-Evey storyline.

V's investigation reveals the full Norsefire conspiracy. Specifically: Sutler personally architected the St. Mary's virus attack as a false-flag operation to consolidate political power. Multiple Norsefire officials — including Bishop Anthony Lilliman, Dr. Delia Surridge, and Conrad Heyer (Norsefire's broadcasting chief) — were all involved in the Larkhill experiments and the broader St. Mary's deception. V methodically tracks down each conspirator and kills them — using deliberately theatrical methods (poisonings, ritual murders, public executions) calculated to maximize political symbolism.

Dr. Delia Surridge — the Larkhill medical researcher who had personally treated V during the experiments — is one of V's targets. Their confrontation in her home is the film's most-emotionally-complex single sequence. Delia recognizes V immediately. She has been quietly tormented by guilt about the Larkhill experiments for years. She does not resist V's vengeance; she accepts the poison he administers and dies peacefully. The sequence is the only V-confronting-a-target scene where the victim accepts death rather than fighting. Delia's diary entries (which Inspector Finch later reads) become V's testimony evidence — the canonical document that would eventually expose the entire Norsefire conspiracy.

Inspector Finch, increasingly disturbed by the evidence his investigation has been uncovering, begins to suspect Norsefire's true history. He reads Delia Surridge's diary. He confronts Sutler privately about the Larkhill experiments. Sutler dismisses him. Finch realizes he is now a Norsefire enemy as well. He continues his investigation but with shifted loyalties — he is no longer hunting V but rather understanding him. The Finch character arc has been widely cited as the film's most-emotionally-substantive single development; Stephen Rea's performance has been widely praised by critics.

Sutler, increasingly unstable, orders Norsefire to seize total power. The government broadcasts a state-of-emergency declaration suspending all remaining civil liberties. Evey delivers V's recorded testimony — exposing the entire government conspiracy at Larkhill — to the BTN state broadcaster. The footage broadcasts during Norsefire's state-of-emergency declaration. The conspiracy is exposed publicly. The Norsefire government begins to collapse from internal dissent. Citizens across England begin to wear Guy Fawkes masks in symbolic protest. The fallen-mask uprising becomes the film's central political-allegorical moment.

V, on the morning of November 5, 2032 (the canonical Guy Fawkes Day), prepares his final attack. He has been planning to detonate the Houses of Parliament using a Tube car loaded with explosives — completing what Guy Fawkes had failed to do in 1605. He encounters Chief Inspector Finch at the underground Tube tunnels. Finch, having decided to assist V's mission, allows him to proceed. V is fatally shot by Norsefire's commanding general Peter Creedy (Tim Pigott-Smith) during the final confrontation. V kills Creedy and his entire commando force before collapsing. He returns to his underground lair to die in Evey's arms.

Evey, alone with V's body, completes V's plan. She loads V's body onto the Tube car along with the explosives. She sends the car toward Parliament. The car explodes in the Underground tunnel directly beneath the Houses of Parliament. Parliament collapses in a controlled implosion. The Norsefire government, broadcasting via BTN, is effectively rendered powerless. Citizens across England — wearing Guy Fawkes masks — march on the destroyed Parliament site, removing their masks one by one. The visual moment — democracy reasserted through anonymous solidarity — has been widely cited as one of the most-iconic political-cinema moments of the 2000s.

The film's epilogue. The mask-removal sequence reveals the cast of characters from throughout the film — Finch, Delia, Sutler's daughter, the disappeared homosexuals, the disappeared Muslims — all having been killed by Norsefire over the years. Their post-mortem appearance among the Guy Fawkes-masked crowd represents the political-revolutionary act of remembering the victims of authoritarian violence. The film closes with Evey's voice-over: V was the idea, the people are the mask, the revolution is the system. The narrative ambiguity of V's individual identity vs. his political symbol is canonically preserved.

Commercial and critical aftermath. V for Vendetta grossed $134 million worldwide on a $54 million production budget — modest commercial success. Critics responded with widely positive reviews (Rotten Tomatoes 73%); the film became the standard by which Alan Moore comic adaptations are measured. The Guy Fawkes mask became a global protest symbol following the film's release — used by the hacker collective Anonymous (founded 2003 but adopting the mask in 2008), the Occupy Wall Street movement (2011), and various subsequent anti-authoritarian protest movements. The mask's commercial sales increased approximately 1,000% in the years following the film's release. The Wachowskis (writing the adaptation under their pre-transition names) and director James McTeigue have not collaborated on a similarly-political project since.