“You cannot kiss an idea,” says a sexy wench (Natalie Portman) at a public hanging in 1605. “They do not bleed. They do not love.” They also look very silly dangling on the end of a rope. The big idea was to bomb the Houses of Parliament. The bright spark was Guy Fawkes.

Welcome to the opening scene of V for Vendetta, a veritable time machine of a film that whisks us from the gallows to the near future to try out this brilliant plan all over again. You can’t fault the logic of James McTeigue’s thriller.

The world has gone to pot. Avian flu has dragged America to its knees. England has become a totalitarian state ruled by a barking high chancellor (John Hurt). Religious extremists have poisoned 80,000 people in the South East. Curfews are enforced every night. Homosexuals, Muslims and liberals are carted off to concentration camps run by crazy scientists.

And the docile folk of Tooting sit slack-jawed in front of terrible game shows and undiluted propaganda on TV. Who can blame them? Stephen Fry is the head of light entertainment, and Roger Allam is the foaming mouth of reason. “England prevails,” he rants at the end of his bulletins.

I’ve never seen such a deranged satire. The screenplay, written by the Wachowski brothers of Matrix fame, is a shrill adaptation of Alan Moore’s popular graphic novel of the same title. Proof, if any was needed, that a sharp cartoon strip can look utterly ridiculous in the flesh. I doubt that Moore’s demand that he be removed from the credits raised a single eyebrow in Hollywood central.

His original 1980s hero, V, wore his Orwellian griev- ances with chilly style. Hugo Weaving’s caped crusader is a crackpot vigilante in a white mask and a Cleopatra wig — a disfigured über-terrorist who moonlights as the Phantom of Fawkes. His deep and sickly voice does nothing to endear him to anyone.

V ghosts through the cobbled streets of London slashing the throats of “Fingermen” who work for the secret police. He carries dozens of kinky knives under his inky cloak. He blows up the Old Bailey with the 1812 Overture blasting from the rooftops. He raids the BBC and promises to demolish Westminster on November 5. He delivers his threats in Shakespearean doggerel, and spouts waffle about the immortality of ideas. Mad? He’s a Lloyd Webber tune short of the world’s most corny musical lead.

He saves a television assistant, Evey (Portman again), from cops who want to rape her. He sweeps the bemused beauty to his secret lair, dazzles her with his forbidden collection of books and paintings, and then tortures Evey mercilessly when she tries to escape. Why? Because he loves her, and he wants to harden her anarchic resolve.

None of it makes the slightest bit of sense to the weary detective (Stephen Rea) who has the thankless task of trying to capture V before the film expires from disbelief.

JAMES CHRISTOPHER

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