Movie review: Watchmen

Watchmen is a groundbreaking graphic novel by Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore. It came out in 1985 and showed to a lot of people that a comic book could be an artform and an effective way of telling an engaging story. It was also rated as one of Time Magazine's 100 Best Novels.

The story takes place in New York in an alternate 1985. In this world costumed heroes are common and America is on the brink of World War III with Russia. But costumed heroes have been outlawed since 1977. So there is only one who is still running around fighting crime. He calls himself Rorschach and he wears a mask that has constantly changing black shapes that resemble an inkblot test.

At the beginning a hero called The Comedian is murdered. Rorschach suspects right away that somebody out there is picking off masked heroes. But the other retired heroes refuse to believe that someone is after them and it must all be in his head.

The rest concerns the character's backstories as well as the investigation to who is behind what is going on. The story is very dialogue heavy and can get pretty heavy at times. I won't go too much more into detail but it's a very good story and a very good book.

So when fans found out that the movie would finally see the light of day they were very excited. Originally the project was given to Terry Gilliam in the late 1980s and he was supposed to release it in the summer of 1990. But after looking at it Gilliam then said that it was unfilmable as a feature length movie and would only do it as at least a 5 hour miniseries. But the studio wanted a feature film so it got scrapped. It bounced between a few directors and after a while no one thought it would ever get made.

Then a few years ago it was announced that director Zack Snyder would be the director. After having a lot of success with 300 people thought he was the right choice for the job.

So is the movie any good? Yes it is.

I know a lot of the diehard fans are a bit upset with some of the things that were done. I personally think it was a faithful adaptation of the book. Yes some things were changed but I don't think they really hurt the overall feel of the movie.

One big complaint I heard was the ending of the movie. But I thought the end was good and even though it wasn't the same as the one in the comic it worked.

As for the actors in this movie I thought that everyone did a good job. The best performance was Jackie Earl Haley who played Rorschach. He had the part down and he looked the part and sounded the part. Everybody else was pretty good. Although I will agree that Malin Akerman who played Laurie Jupiter was a bit wooden. And Billy Crudup who played the character of Dr. Manhattan wasn't completely convincing as being unemotional.

Dr. Manhattan is an interesting character. He is a man who in a scientific accident is transformed into a large blue man who has the ability to control matter. He also can teleport himself and can see through time as though it was all happening at once. But be prepared to see him naked quite a few times.

The visual look of the movie is very close to the graphic novel. New York is dark and dreary and the characters look a lot like they did in the comic. It was pretty obvious that this movie was full of tons of special effects but they really helped to transport you into that world.

Some people have complained that the movie is too long clocking in at about 2 hours and 40 minutes. But to me the time just flew by and by the end I hadn't felt like I had just watched a nearly 3 hour movie.

The fight scenes in the movie were also really well done. Snyder showed in 300 that he knows how to show people beating the crap out of each other. He used a lot of the same techniques that he used in 300 to pretty good effect. There was some use of slow motion and it worked. One complaint was some of the fight scenes were a little short and there is a part in a prison that could have lasted a bit longer but it felt a little too short. Right before that part there was a love scene that was filmed well but it seemed to go on a little longer than it should have.

I wouldn't say this movie is exactly a cinematic masterpiece but it was a very good movie. When this comes out on Blu-Ray it is going to find its way into my collection and I'm sure I'll enjoy watching it over again. I know with a movie like this you aren't going to please everyone but speaking from someone who just recently read the graphic novel I thought they did a very good job with the movie translation.

My score: 9.0/10