RENOWNED graphic novelist Alan Moore wrote V For Vendetta as a left-wing attack on the privations of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Government in the 1980s.

The film version, released this week, arrives in a different time and the new screenplay, by Matrix helmers the Wachowski brothers, brings a post 9/11 sensibility to events with state cover-ups and campaigns against terrorism to the fore.

Moore's absence from the credits is less to do with the updated adaptation and more his despair at past film versions of his work: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was extraordinarily bad, From Hell went straight to video and The Watchmen is yet to make it to screens, stuck in endless development negotiations.

It may not have gained Moore's endorsement but V For Vendetta is easily the best big screen version of his work, retaining the author's examinations on revenge and freedom with only isolated recourse to fight choreography and pyrotechnics.

It is set in the near future with Britain under the control of a God-fearing totalitarian regime where any racial, sexual or political difference is eliminated. Seemingly the sole voice of dissent is a Guy-Fawkes-masked terrorist known only as V who stages classically soundtracked detonations of London's most famous landmarks.

V's call for anarchy is personally motivated. His strength and resilience is the result of mutations caused by Holocaust-like chemical warfare experiments carried out under the auspices of the Government.

His targets include all those conspiratorial in his incarceration. When called upon he proves himself pretty nimble with a set of daggers, but often disposes of his quarry by lethal injection. Hardly the stuff of your typical action movie.

V loves to talk. His speech is full of alliterative flourishes and quotes from Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe. Hugo Weaving's performance behind the mask presents an interesting contrast between the verbosity and lovey-ness of his speech and the inscrutability of his features.

Weaving seems to relish the challenge and generates a surprising amount of pathos for the character.

Natalie Portman is the recognisable face of the film but her performance as a television editor, Evey, who is drawn into V's world is less satisfactory. Her English accent wanders all over the place, taking in a good part of the Commonwealth, and she spends a good part of the film sporting an unflattering Aliens-like skinhead.

The tone and look of the film is a little uneven. Full screen images of John Hurt nicely inverting his role in that other dystopian vision of the future 1984 as the Government's chancellor are compelling but few of the rest of the cast can match him.

The dour homogeny of the London streets the film presents clashes with views of civilians at home which owe more to cheesy sitcoms of the 1970s.

There is also a strange sequence when Stephen Fry, playing a TV star in the state-controlled media, broadcasts a satirical episode of his show which involves a chancellor look-a-like being chased around the stage Benny-Hill-like by someone in a V-mask. It falls embarrassingly flat and Fry's character almost deserves the nasty fate dished out to him for his supposed sedition.

The film's release was put back in the wake of the London bombings. Director James McTeigue said the delayed release has not been altered at all. A London underground train being used as a vehicle for bombs to blow up the Houses of Parliament is retained but references to bird flu must surely have been a later addition. It's easy to see why the film was deemed inflammatory at the time with a heroic terrorist uttering lines such as "blowing up a building can change the world".

Despite its rather awkward stance of having feet in both the comic book action adventure and serious drama it still provides an affecting paen for the power of the people. Alan Moore will be pleased.