P for Provocative: V for Vendetta Presents a World Where the Government Exploits People's Fear of Terrorism and Denies Gays and Lesbians Their Civil Rights. Sound Familiar?

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It's a disturbingly plausible nightmare scenario: In the big-budget studio thriller V for Vendetta, a totalitarian state, driven by fundamentalist Christian ideologues, rises in England under the specter of massive terrorist attacks. The government exploits the public's collective fear as an excuse to persecute and imprison Muslims, political dissidents, and gays and lesbians. What's more, the film's hero is a self-styled terrorist, a mysterious masked man named V (Hugo Weaving) with an affection for Guy Fawkes--the infamous Englishman who tried to blow up the houses of Parliament in 1605--whom we see through the eyes of Evey (Natalie Portman), an orphaned naif whom V rescues from rape …