D+

“It’s all gone wrong, hasn’t it?” a minor character, a policeman, inquires of his superior at one point late in “V for Vendetta,” and a sage viewer will nod his head in agreement. The comment could easily refer to the final two installments of Andy and Larry Wachowski’s “Matrix” trilogy, which went seriously awry, but it can also be applied to this follow-up (written by them, though the directorial duties this time around have been assumed by newcomer James McTeigue).

The picture is another visually striking but ponderous and self-important tale of resistance against brutal authority, this time in the form of a weird cross between “The Count of Monte Cristo” and “The Phantom of the Opera” set against the backdrop of an Orwellian society modeled after “1984.” Though based on a two-decades old graphic novel by Alan Moore (text) and David Lloyd (art) that was an angry assault on what the creators saw as the excesses of the Thatcher government in Britain, it’s been updated into a diatribe against what many see as a western tendency toward fascistic leadership and popular intolerance in the post-9/11 world; and even if you agree with its attitude on the dangers posed by such developments, you’re likely to find its treatment rather ham-fisted– it can even be read as an apologia for terrorism, though the filmmakers would doubtlessly deny it. But whether you see it in that light or not, the fact that Moore had his name removed from the picture is telling. Of course, he might have done so merely as a protective measure: after all, in “From Hell” and “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,” he’d already seen how botched film adaptations of his work could be. If so, he was quite foresighted: “V” isn’t appreciably better than those first two debacles.

The picture begins with a prologue celebrating Guy Fawkes, the fellow who famously tried to blow up Parliament in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 and was executed for his crime the following year. It then proceeds to the England of the near future, a crudely fascist state presided over by Adam Sutler (John Hurt), a Big Brother type who periodically addresses his people with simplistic banalities while angrily castigating his underlings for their ineptitude. (It’s later explained that he came to power after a series of biological terrorist attacks which killed thousands.) But there appears a righteous black-clothed avenger, V (Hugo Weaving), who wears a white Guy Fawkes mask and, after rescuing a young woman named Evey (Natalie Portman) from some of the regime’s curfew-enforcing goons, invites her to watch him blow up the Old Bailey. The next day he invades the state-controlled television headquarters, where Evey works for popular comedian Deitrich (Stephen Fry), to broadcast a message promising that a year hence he will blow up Parliament and inviting the public to come out to witness the event (and, in the process, defy and overthrow Sutler). (It has to be noted that blowing up Parliament–the symbol of representative government–seems an odd way to protest authoritarian rule by a single man who’s supplanted it. But once you start with the Fawkes analogy–itself a curious choice, since the fellow was acting in pursuit of the re-establishment of a Catholic regime in England, which would hardly have been liberal or tolerant–I suppose you have to follow it through, however weird it becomes.)

The remainder of the picture goes off in several tangents. Evey is again rescued by V and taken to his “Phantom”-like lair (it turns out her parents were radicals who died in government captivity); V begins systematically to kill off a bunch of important people (most notably a wild-eyed TV commentator named Prothero, played by Roger Allam) and leaving red roses on their corpses (at least he doesn’t inscribe a “V” on their bodies with a sword); Evey leaves V and is taken in by Deitrich, whose lampooning of Sutler (as well as his closeted homosexuality and habit of collecting prohibited artifacts, like a Koran) lead to his downfall; and a principled police investigator (Stephen Rea) tries to identify V, a search that makes him look into the true nature of the terrorism that created such a climate of fear in the country that the populace acceded to Sutler’s repressive rule. In the end the script is hopeful about the possibility that the citizenry be aroused and official misconduct exposed and punished, even if it takes a little push from a vigilante like V. To which an observer of the actual political circumstances of our time might well reply with the single word that seems most frequently used in the Wachowskis’ dialogue: “Bollocks.”

But what makes “V for Vendetta” really infuriating is that the serious issues it tries to raise are cheapened by its combination of pretentious preaching and comic-book derring-do. By treating them in such a simple-minded, flat-footed fashion it becomes little different from previous futuristic claptrap like “The Island” and “Aeon Flux.” McTeigue could have helped matters by treating the piece less lethargically; he apparently hoped that the script’s deep thoughts could be successfully unpacked by deliberation, but all the slow pace succeeds in doing is italicizing its excesses and missteps. (At one point, for example, V disappears from the movie for what seems like an eternity–a curious way to treat the supposed protagonist–although Evey is actually the audience surrogate. In addition, it might have been better to excise the references to “Monte Cristo” entirely; even if the point is to tie the picture to a western tradition of justified resistance to tyranny, it adds a juvenile dimension one assumes the picture wants to avoid. And wouldn’t it have been interesting–and more pertinent–to jettison the entire “government conspiracy” aspect of the plot, which comes across as dumb anyway, in favor of the more challenging notion that even actual terrorism doesn’t justify a fascist response?)

The overly emphatic, dirge-like pacing has a deadening effect on the actors, too. Weaving, the villain from the “Matrix” picture, never actually shows his face in the picture–he doesn’t even get to appear at the end, the way that Claude Rains did in “The Invisible Man.” But he moves well throughout (it’s actually a balletic sort of turn, like The Phantom in Lloyd-Webber’s musical), and he uses his voice effectively, even if entirely too much of his dialogue is so florid and ostentatiously literary that it merely sounds ridiculously affected. Unhappily, he’s never able to make V really exciting or charismatic. Portman gets as far from the world of “Star Wars” as one can imagine–instead of wearing the Marge Simpson-like headgear of “The Phantom Menace,” she gets her head shaved–but she’s curiously inexpressive and dull throughout. The same’s true of Rea, who plods through the piece as glum and disenchanted as most viewers will be. The sole performers who add any sparkle at all are Hurt, who chews the scenery until it’s mere shards in his teeth (so closely photographed that one can see every stain on them), and Fry, who provides the picture’s only saving moments of humor.

To be fair, the effects in “V for Vendetta” are excellent. As with “The Matrix,” it represents state-of-the-art visuals, and one must congratulate cinematographer Adrian Biddle, production designer Owen Patterson, art decorators Sarah Horton, Sebastian Krawinkel and Steve Bream, and set decorator Peter Walpole, as well as effects supervisors Uli Nefzer, Matt Johnson and Thrain Shadbolt. But unlike the Wachowskis’ 1999 smash, even on this score the film doesn’t really break new ground or show you sights you haven’t seen before.

So Mr. Moore showed himself quite prescient in at least one respect. Whether one agrees with his vision of the future or not, you have to admit he was right to see that “V for Vendetta” would turn out wrong. That’s three strikes, Mr. Moore.