V for Vendetta (2005)

This movie has a lot going for it, and should have been fun. I mean, Hugo Weaving for heaven's sake! The Wachowski brothers! But Weaving is trapped behind an immobile mask for the whole movie, and the script is a monument to moral incoherence. This is a movie that fancies itself a timely allegory for the fight against government tyranny and groupthink, focusing in particular on the inevitable slide into abduction and torture common to all paranoid, totalitarian systems. And yet torture is also the means by which the hero supposedly expresses his love and frees the soul of his beloved! (Naturally, the heroine is tortured; for some reason filmmakers persistently equate violence against women with metaphor. See "Boxing Helena" for evidence that this is not only a male-director problem.) It's doubly discouraging to watch a movie whose principles one largely agrees with fall into such a ridiculous mess. Look for a nice glimpse of Sinead Cusack, however, as well as a good bit from Steven Fry, though neither of them can escape the moronities of their respective characters.