V for Vendetta

Premiere Glenn Kenny

A compelling, rousing and at times strangely moving entertainment.

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

Richly satisfying entertainment the way movies are at their best, when they prod you to think.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

V for Vendetta puts its ideological intent first, and happens to provide smashing entertainment only as a vehicle for delivering its message.

Time Richard Corliss

It's a terrific movie. I love the look and the verve of the thing, the confidence of its epic design, its smart use of half a dozen noted British thesps, lending weight and wit to the supporting roles.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

The explosive V for Vendetta is powered by ideas that are not computer-generated. It's something rare in Teflon Hollywood: a movie that sticks with you.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

An entertaining piece of pulp fiction.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

V for Vendetta represents 2006's first memorable motion picture - a visually sumptuous concoction that combines political allegory, bloody action, and a few stunning cinematic moments into a solid piece of entertainment.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Portman doesn't catch fire until the second half, then heaves herself into emotional action; this suits her initially passive, mostly unthinking character. Weaving, who acts entirely with his voice, is V's ideal embodiment: witty, rueful, pitiless, visionary and mad.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Visually exhilarating, provocative and disturbing.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

The Wachowski Brothers once again they prove themselves our reigning masters of murk.

Empire Dan Jolin

Setting out more to challenge us with its ideas than make us whoop at the action, Vendetta can be clumsy, but there are enough impressive flourishes to make up for its stumblings.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

It's the perfect moment for the ridiculous but riotously enjoyable revolutionary comic-book thriller V for Vendetta-which will doubtless outrage conservatives and unnerve fuddy-duddys but liberate the rest of us with its magisterial irresponsibility.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

One of the most eloquent tales in ages of dysfunctional love – between a man and his ideals, between a country and its government, and, in the end, between Evey and V.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

With most action thrillers based on graphic novels, we simply watch the sound and light show. V for Vendetta, directed by James McTeigue, almost always has something going on that is actually interesting, inviting us to decode the character and plot and apply the message where we will.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

A lot of dark, Orwellian fun.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Even if V for Vendetta isn't nearly as incendiary as it's been made out to be by some alarmist critics, there's still something enjoyably subversive about it, beginning with the way it tramples over the conventions of the contemporary action film.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

Hugo Weaving, weaving deftly beneath a fixed plastic grin and Prince Valiant wig as the mysterious avenger in V for Vendetta, both chills and amuses throughout this enjoyable - if occasionally irresponsible - comic-book thriller.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

First-time director James McTeigue's big, bold imagery, with slashing reds and blacks, is a close approximation of the novel's look and feel.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

Mostly, it's content to remain a compelling, visually striking political mystery with some big ideas woven into it--subversive notions about integrity, liberty, and political change.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

As a fix of pop iconography, V for Vendetta is eyeball grabbing, even if it lacks the relentless videogame bravura that sold the Matrix films. As a movie, however, it's merely okay, with a pivotal dramatic weakness: Evey, for all the attentions of her revolutionary Svengali, remains, in essence, a bystander, and Portman, her head shaved, plays her like Joan of Arc as a tremulous Girl Scout.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Brutally gorgeous and seething with incendiary images.

Dallas Observer Luke Y. Thompson

From a fan's perspective, though, one might wish for a smaller budget and a truly uncompromising vision.

The Hollywood Reporter John DeFore

Viewers expecting a thrill ride might be disappointed. V engages in a couple of satisfying crime-fighting set pieces, but the story is more occupied with mystery and intrigue. Happily, it almost is entirely free of the hollow pomposity that marred the Wachowskis' last two "Matrix" films.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

The swashbuckling first hour is superior to the second, which bursts at the seams with backstory, but a rousing climax makes this the most potent piece of agitpop in years.

Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar

With its emphasis on dialogue and political machinations over explosions and kung fu fighting, it remains to be see whether or not V for Vendetta will actually find one (a wider audience).

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

It's the strangest comic-book superhero movie you're likely to see this year. For anyone looking for something totally different in this most overworked of Hollywood genres, this is it.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

V for very, very ordinary.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

The real villain is a cowed and lazy citizenry. Meaning all of us. Disappointingly, V for Vendetta makes this point early and moves on, at some point turning as shallow as what it protests against.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

Finally, a film to unite movie-mad members of Al Qaeda with your neighbor's kid, the one with the crush on Natalie Portman.

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

By the time you've gotten through it, you feel spent, loaded down and more than a little disoriented. Part of the problem is that the movie's big concepts - violence begets violence, absolute power corrupts absolutely, everything is connected, my terrorist is your freedom fighter, etc. - are pithy, brief and irrefutable enough to embroider on throw pillows.

Variety Leslie Felperin

Suffers from many of same problems as last two installments of producers Andy and Larry Wachowski's "Matrix" franchise: indigestible dialogue, pacing difficulties and too much pseudo-philosophical info.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Absorbing even in its incoherence,V for Vendetta manages to make an old popular mythology new. Impossible not to break into a grin: It's the thought that counts.

Newsweek Jeff Giles

The movie plays like a clumsy assault on post-9/11 paranoia. It references "America's war," uses imagery direct from Abu Ghraib and contains dialogue likely to offend anyone who's not, say, a suicide bomber.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

The more valid question is how anyone who isn't 14 or under could possibly mistake a corporate bread-and-circus entertainment like this for something subversive. You want radical? Wait for the next Claire Denis film.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Both oversimplifies and overcomplicates Moore's and Lloyd's vision, but it never cuts to the bone. It's a movie drawn with big, bold strokes and very little feeling -- a tracing-paper exercise masquerading as a masterpiece.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

The film is beset by incoherence and implausibilities that are perplexing, given the close relationship between the Wachowskis and the director, Mr. McTeigue.

The New Yorker David Denby

The quarter-century-old disgruntled fantasies of two English comic-book artists, amplified by a powerful movie company, and ambushed by history, wind up yielding a disastrous muddle.

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

V for Vendetta is a dud - far too long at nearly two and a half hours, with flat, grungy visuals, choppy editing and no sense of urgency. But as a political work, it's something else - heavy-handed, reactionary and flat-out stupid. (For the record, Moore has publicly distanced himself from the film, saying it bears precious little resemblance to his original creation.)

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

A piece of pulp claptrap; it has no insights whatsoever into totalitarian psychology and always settles for the cheesiest kinds of demagoguery and harangue as its emblems of evil. They say they want a revolution? Then give us a revolution, one that's believable, frightening, heroic, coherent and not a teenagers' freaky power trip.