“V for Vendetta,” which opened on Friday is a shocking, exciting and thought provoking film directed by James McTeigue and produced and written by the Wachowski brothers, creators of the “Matrix” trilogy.

Bringing this film to life is a very talented cast boasting such names as Hugo Weaving, Natalie Portman and John Hurt.

“V for Vendetta” tells the story of a freedom fighter known only as V played by Weaving who lives in near future England where an oppressive totalitarian government has seized control.

V encounters a young woman named Evey Hammond played by Portman, who gets caught up in V’s fight against the tyranny of their government.

This film is adapted from the graphic novel written in the early 1980’s by acclaimed writer Alan Moore. “V for Vendetta” was a commentary on the conservative administrations of Margaret Thatcher in England and Ronald Regan in the United States during the 1980’s.

While “V for Vendetta” was highly entertaining, well acted and well written it was disappointing how dissimilar the film was from the original graphic novel. Events throughout the story were moved around or omitted, characters were written out, integral departments of the government are barely touched on and even the main character, V, feels strangely underdeveloped.

In the comic book, V is emotionally scarred and obviously psychotic, albeit brilliant. The film seems to concentrate too strongly on the character of Evey.The film version of “V for Vendetta” felt like the creators were taking a political commentary that has withstood the test of time and reworked it to be an attack against the current Bush administration.

While there is nothing wrong with political commentary, “V for Vendetta” the graphic novel was written to criticize the political climate of the 1980’s and just doesn’t fit when applied, even tacitly, to the backdrop of today.

Overall, “V for Vendetta” was an enjoyable and very insightful film about the dangers of governments gaining too much power, but fans of the original graphic novel may find the film quite lacking.