Having dealt with "V for Vendetta" a couple months back, after seeing an early screening (see "This Movie Will Kick Your Ass"), I don't think there's any need to rehash — it's a cool movie; by all means go see it.

Afterward, though, check out some of the oddly grumpy reviews that have been popping up prior to its release. In The New Yorker, David Denby called the film "a dunderheaded pop fantasia that celebrates terrorism and destruction." Time writer Lev Grossman asked, "Who thought this was a good idea?" You might think this movie was the match that would finally send this tinderbox world up in flames.

Does the protagonist of "V for Vendetta" qualify as a terrorist because he kills evil people and blows up symbolic buildings? It's a cliché to say that one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter, and it's not always true. Were the saboteurs of the French Resistance during the Nazi occupation of their country in World War II terrorists? Are actual terrorists not killers who make no distinction between their enemy and innocent civilians? I don't think V — who is striking back against the murderers who not only have enslaved his country, but who once maimed him — qualifies as a terrorist in that way. In comparison with the actual terrorists we know so well today — people who videotape their most hideous crimes for posting on the Internet — V, although clearly a troubled guy, seems relatively noble.

The movie does have a problem, though, and I think Alan Moore, the author of the "V for Vendetta" comics, nails it in a recent MTV.com interview (see "Alan Moore: The Last Angry Man"). In adapting his story, which was written back in the 1980s, the Wachowski Brothers have awkwardly imposed upon it a very contemporary, Hollywood-style anti-Bush agenda. There's nothing wrong with doing this, of course — millions may cheer. But the attempted visual link at one point between the Bush and the Nazi eras, and the Red State-baiting observation (not present in Moore's original story) that the dictator Sutler started out as a devoutly religious conservative, are strained and ungainly. As Moore suggests in his interview, if the Wachowskis had had the courage of their convictions, they would have relocated the story to this country and mounted a full-frontal assault on their target. That would have been honest, at least.

The movie probably wouldn't have been so cool, though.

"Thank You For Smoking": One Cheer For The Evil Weed

Aaron Eckhart is all heart and charm as Nick Naylor in this very funny adaptation of Christopher Buckley's 1994 satirical novel. Nick's appeal is a little conflicting for the viewer, because he's a highly paid flack for Big Tobacco — "the Colonel Sanders of cigarettes," as he puts it. Not everyone is won over by his genial grin and slick patter, of course ("Few people know what it's like to be truly despised," he says), but that's okay — his job is to keep these people, the forces of tobacco-demonization, at bay.

He's a master of spin. Booked onto a midday talk show with a teenage tobacco addict who's contracted cancer, Nick asks the host, with practiced sincerity, "How would we profit from the loss of this young man? We'd lose a smoker." Dropping by his 12-year-old son's grade-school class to talk about his job, he's confronted by a little girl who announces, "My mommy says cigarettes kill." Not missing a beat, Nick asks her sweetly, "Is your mommy a doctor?" Then he hoists the banner of American individualism, telling the kids, "You have to think for yourself. Challenge authority!"

Nick has regular get-togethers at a Washington restaurant with two fellow lobbyists: Polly Bailey (Maria Bello), who represents the nation's alcohol producers, and Bobby Jay Bliss (David Koechner), who toils for the gun industry. They call themselves the M.O.D. Squad (M.O.D. for Merchants of Death), and Nick is their star shill — his product kills more people than Polly's and Bobby's combined.

But defending Big Tobacco is becoming ever more of a losing battle. One man in particular, a prissy, anti-tobacco U.S. senator named Ortolan Finistirre (William H. Macy), is enraged by Nick's winning style of flackery. It was Finistirre who had an aide seek out the teenage nicotine fiend for that talk show, and he was irked that the boy wasn't pathetic enough to subvert Nick's spiel. "When you're looking for a cancer kid," he angrily tells the aide, "he should be hopeless."

Meanwhile, Nick has come up with a great new idea that his bosses love: bribing Hollywood movie producers to have more actors smoke cigarettes in their films. While that plan is gestating, though, he has to pay a visit to Lorne Lutch (Sam Elliott), a onetime Marlboro Man who's now dying of lung cancer, and bribe him to stop bad-mouthing his former employers. Then there's Heather Holloway (Katie Holmes) to worry about. She's an investigative newspaper reporter who's doing a story on Big Tobacco and wants to interview Nick over dinner. (He shrewdly plies her with a bottle of '82 Margaux; later at his apartment, she plies him back.) On top of all this, a group of anti-tobacco zealots has issued a fatwa on Nick's life.

Lorne Lutch proves difficult to deal with. Heather's story turns out to be a hatchet job. Senator Finistirre gleefully subpoenas Nick to testify before his anti-tobacco congressional subcommittee. (He shows up with a new study that suggests smoking can help ward off Parkinson's disease.) And the anti-tobacco zealots start closing in.

"Thank You for Smoking" is spiked with smart, sardonic lines, and it moves along at a brisk clip. (The picture is only 92 minutes long.) Aaron Eckhart gives one of his most genial performances — you can't not like his character — and he's skillfully supported by, among others, Rob Lowe, who plays a preposterously megalomaniacal Hollywood fixer, and the invaluable J.K. Simmons (the blowhard newspaper editor in the "Spider-Man" movies), who plays Nick's boss, a tobacco-industry lifer who reveres the evil weed as nature's most perfect product. ("Cigarettes are cool, they're available, and they're addictive," he says. "The job's almost done for us.") The movie's worth catching just to see if a guy with one of the world's most deplorable gigs can possibly prevail over the armies of civic righteousness. I mean, is nothing sacred?

"The Zodiac": Sign Of The Times

This first feature by writer and director Alexander Bulkley derives its considerable creepiness almost entirely from its subject: a series of random and extraordinarily vicious murders perpetrated by a still-unknown killer in the San Francisco Bay area in the late 1960s. (The Zodiac crimes, as they came to be called, were the basis of the 1971 Clint Eastwood movie, "Dirty Harry.")

The first of these killings took place on the night of December 20, 1968, near Vallejo, when an assailant walked up to a car parked in a secluded place and repeatedly shot the young man and woman inside, killing them both. A similar duel shooting occurred in the Vallejo area the following July, after which an unknown man called local police and claimed responsibility for the crime. "They were shot with a 9 mm Luger," he said. "I also killed those kids last year. Good bye."

On September 27, 1969, the killer attacked another couple picnicking by a lake, stabbing them repeatedly. The woman lived long enough to describe to police a man wearing a hood and a mask and a Zodiac symbol on his chest. The last known Zodiac killing took place on October 11, 1969 — a taxi driver who was shot to death in his cab on a San Francisco street. There may have been other murders. There may have been many others.

Throughout this period, the killer kept up a chilling correspondence with police and local newspapers. Many of the 21 letters he sent began with the words, "This is the Zodiac speaking," before moving on to coolly discuss such things as "the good times I have had in Vallejo." At one point he sent an encrypted message that he claimed would reveal his identity. Professional codebreakers were unable to crack the cypher, but two local amateurs — a high school teacher and his wife — managed to work it out. The message, however, proved unrevealing.

Bulkley's bare-bones movie focuses on the baffled reaction of the Vallejo police, in particular a young detective named Matt Parish (Justin Chambers), whose increasing obsession with the case begins to alienate and then scare his wife (Robin Tunney) and son (Rory Culkin). The picture effectively conveys a sense of obscure, stalking menace in the sunny California suburbs; and the killings are coldly horrific without devolving into murder porn. The movie's pacing is slumberous, though, and Chambers lacks the star wattage that might otherwise hold your attention.

One anticipates that these problems will not be apparent in "Zodiac," another film version of the story now being made by director David Fincher ("Fight Club," "Se7en"), with a cast that includes Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr., and Mark Ruffalo. The movie's due out in September, and Fincher's researchers claim to have turned up new evidence in the case. It'll never be too late for that.

— Kurt Loder

Check out everything we've got on "V for Vendetta," "Thank You for Smoking" and "The Zodiac."

Visit Movies on MTV.com for Hollywood news, interviews, trailers and more.