You movie watchers who like to watch your action films absent mindedly, who like to rest your brain for a couple hours amidst a whirlpool of special effects, campy acting, and I.Q.-lowering dialogue, might do better watching “Matrix Revolutions” than “V for Vendetta.” “V for Vendetta,” written and co-produced by Andy and Larry Wachowski and directed by James McTeigue, does not live up to the action movie expectations of the film’s trailers. Based on Alan Moore’s graphic novel from the early 1980s, the movie relies more on thought-provoking messages, believable acting and engaging story telling than hours of eyeball-blowing action.

“V for Vendetta” is a gloomy, dystopian vision of the future along the lines of “1984,” “A Brave New World,” and the under-rated Christian Bale vehicle “Equilibrium.” The story begins in London on Nov. 5, 2020. The world has fallen into chaos following a rampant virus, and Britain finds itself strangled under the authoritarian regime of Adam Sutler.

The character of the eponymous title (Hugo Weaving) is a vigilante with a simple mission: to destroy Sutler’s dictatorship and return Britain to the control of its people. V says: “People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.”

The two protagonists are introduced in the first sequence of the film where V saves Evey Hammond (Natalie Portman) from being raped by corrupt police officers on the barren streets of a future London.

After the rapists are curtly dealt with, V escorts Evey to a roof top, promising her a concert the likes of which she has never seen. As they stand on the roof, opera music slowly fills the London streets. As the song crescendos to its climax, an adjacent government building, the Old Bailey Courthouse, erupts in a spectacle of explosions and fireworks in the shape of the letter V.

After V destroys the courthouse, Sutler tries to keep V’s act out of the media, and the film quickly shows just how far Sutler’s iron hand can reach. V infiltrates the British Television Network, where Evey works as an assistant, and hijacks a service channel to broadcast his message to every television set in London. He takes credit for the destruction of the courthouse and, hoping to set off a coup and remove Sutler’s corrupt regime from power, promises to destroy Parliament in exactly one year.

Story-wise, this is all I can tell you; after this, there are many twists and turns as Nov. 5, 2021 approaches and V’s seemingly impossible coup becomes a very likely possibility. The film explores V’s exploits and mischief throughout the year between his terrorist attacks and investigates V’s past and his relationship with Evey to see what causes a man to resort to terrorism. The film concludes with a spectacular climax that offers the audience their brief taste of well-choreographed and violent action scenes, and should leave very few disappointed or lacking topics of conversation.

In a modern world where our president sanctions secret wire-taps and our military is under scrutiny for torture and alleged violation of detainees’ human rights in the name of stopping terrorism, “V for Vendetta” could very easily be read as a parable for contemporary issues, as Sutler’s regime practices all of these violations of human rights.

The “V for Vendetta” story of an authoritarian futuristic regime nobly resisted by clear-thinking and fast-acting heroes searching for freedom and human rights has been seen, heard, and read hundreds of times. But this is not to say that any previous version has done it better than McTeigue and the Wachowski brothers. Though the message may be clich, and it is curiously lacking the extreme violence that was expected of it, “V for Vendetta” succeeds in offering thoroughly enjoyable entertainment, and should not leave you wishing you had saved your eight bucks for Serendipity.