Watchmen reviews

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A few guys at work saw the movie at a special screening and didn't care for it because it was "too long" and "hard to understand" which is what I expected to hear, but I'm still excited as hell.
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Hopelessly Devoted
Zack Snyder’s Watchmen is as faithful an adaptation as a fanboy could want.

By David Edelstein Published Feb 27, 2009

Reading Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s splashy, blood-drenched superhero graphic novel Watchmen is a delirious experience—the eye races forward, circles back, and darts around the panels while the brain labors to synthesize the data. Every breed of crusader is here, working in tandem or at cross-purposes, from the old-fashioned idealist in the cape and cowl to the paramilitary sociopath to the curvy femme in dominatrix garb. Now the narrator is Rorschach, a grotty right-wing nihilist in a stocking-cap mask; now it’s Dr. Manhattan, an iridescent blue giant in a cosmic funk who sits on Mars and sifts through lost time. While our heroes try to solve a murder mystery and forestall a nuclear Armageddon, there are flashbacks and flashbacks-within-flashbacks; chunks of prose memoir; a parallel comic-book saga (a character is reading a pirate comic); glimpses of apocalyptic news events on TV screens; and backstories that are literally that—they play out at the rear of the frame. When I read that Zack Snyder (300), the director of the movie, had vowed to stay true to the original’s spirit by moving the camera as little as possible (because, you see, comics are laid out a frame at a time), I had a Dr. Manhattan–size premonition of doom. Moore and Gibbons used every tool they could invent to push their medium to its limit—and their work is in the hands of people who’ve decided to cast off many of their own medium’s tools in a misguided attempt at fidelity. How could Watchmen not be dead on the screen?

It is, at least, an awe-inspiring corpse: huge, noisy, gaseously distended by its own dystopia. The martial-arts action scenes are full of CGI slooooow motion capped with hyperfast smash-and-splatter. Fanboys will be pleased that the characters appear to have leaped from the page, while the novel’s (dis)order of events has been meticulously preserved. In the overture, a wiry dark figure heaves aging superhero the Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and his smiley-face button out a skyscraper window. The outlawed-vigilante collective the Watchmen dust off their costumes and gear and get back in touch—albeit tentatively, since they’re all weighed down by hopelessness, and since no one but the paranoiac Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) thinks there’s a conspiracy afoot. Dr. Manhattan (a special effect modeled on Billy Crudup) is the gloomiest: Estranged from humanity, convinced he’s carcinogenic, he does his Proust-on-Mars thing while his bodacious girlfriend Laurie, a.k.a. Silk Spectre II (Malin Akerman), moves in with bespectacled sweetie Dan, a.k.a. Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson). Without the big blue Doc to protect the U.S., the still-in-office Richard Nixon (Robert Wisden with a putty nose) watches the Soviets mass on the Afghan border and orders the bombers armed. Watchmen was conceived at the height of the eighties disarmament movement, after Reagan’s election inspired waves of fresh doomsday scenarios, and its resolution has dated badly: Outlandish even then, it now seems both insanely pessimistic and naïve. As you watch the surviving characters slink away after a long two-and-three-quarters hours, you might long for the relative giddiness of The Dark Knight.

There are actors amid the effects, all of them diligent. Under his excellent mask (the black splotches ever rearranging themselves), Haley would win a hammy-rasp contest against Christian Bale, and as the preening, demented billionaire Veidt, a.k.a. Ozymandias, Matthew Goode speaks with a lack of inflection that’s very amusing. Crudup (or some dimension of him) underplays soulfully. Wilson cleans his oversize glasses with Clark Kentish earnestness. Bodacious Akerman is va-va-voooom in vinyl, although she sounds like she was dubbed by Natalie Portman’s Princess Amidala (a lust-killer). Elements come to fleeting life, but numbness overtakes all. Alan Moore refused (in advance) to put his name on the movie, which must have hurt Snyder and company terribly; they’ve made the most reverent adaptation of a graphic novel ever. But this kind of reverence kills what it seeks to preserve. The movie is embalmed.
"Young men make wars and the virtues of war are the virtues of young men: courage and hope for the future. Then old men make the peace, and the vices of peace are the vices of old men: mistrust and caution." -- Alec Guinness (Lawrence of Arabia)
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From Empire Magazine...

Watchmen (18)

****

Recently quizzed on his expectations for the movie adaptation of his hallowed graphic novel Watchmen, Alan Moore — shaman, philosopher, citizen of Northampton and visionary comic-book auteur — was heard to sigh. “Do we need any more shitty films in this world?” he grumbled not-unreasonably. After all, a muddled V For Vendetta and the gigantic snafu that was The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen had led him to finally cut all ties (including financial) with the movie world. Let them do what they will, just don’t involve me. He concluded his diatribe with the simple remonstration that Watchmen, his masterwork, was “inherently unfilmable”.

Which is not exactly encouraging for a director attempting their dream project. But Zack Snyder, hot from his stylised-if-juvenile adaptation of Frank Miller’s 300, is a determined man. Even if Moore had turned his back, Snyder was one of the faithful, Watchmen his Bible, and would treat it with a care unprecedented in the annals of Hollywood screw-ups. Every sinew of directorial effort has been bent on proving the author wrong.

Equal parts celebration, parody and exotic dissembling of an entire industry, the novel is dizzy with storytelling devices: not just comic-strips, but biographical chapters, diaries, newspaper reports, poetry quotations, medical files and a warped, ultra-violent story-within-a-story called Tales Of The Black Freighter (sensibly siphoned off by Snyder into an accompanying animated DVD release). It was less the Citizen Kane of graphic novels than the Ulysses — a vortex of astonishing ideas that could take you years to fully compute. Stick that into two hours of family entertainment then, Zack…

In this gloomy, alternative Nixonian America, an outcast superhero has been tossed out of his apartment window. Still, The Comedian, former member of the disbanded Watchmen, has some ugly secrets. Rorschach, a paranoid sleuth whose ink-blot mask eerily ebbs and flows with his moods, can smell conspiracy, but his fellow ex-Watchmen are hard to convince. Ultra-brain Ozymandias is locked away in his ivory tower solving the energy crisis, Nite Owl and Silk Spectre are fretting over freakish pasts, while Dr. Manhattan — the only genuine superhero, having been blasted in a freak atomic accident — has become detached from human emotion, capable of knowing his future and travelling to Mars on a whim.
It’s a whodunnit, although what exactly has been done is hard to say. It’s an action movie heavy on dialogue, although the movie styles up the punch-ups into slow-mo montages slickly edited to effective if anomalous tunes — a Snyder predilection that can lean towards the wearily hip. It’s an origin story, or rather five origin stories flashbacking through time. It’s a bleak, rangy tale of a planet beset with disorder, a parable about power, and a superhero soap that shuttles between multiple story arcs that almost divides the film into comic-book cells.

Greater reputations than Snyder’s have wrestled with the beast to no avail. Terry Gilliam, no stranger to whirling structures and otherworldliness, couldn’t figure it out. Paul Greengrass, no stranger to political subtexts and propulsive action, was abandoned by a sceptical studio. Amid the mud-hurling of the recent court case, the script was accused of being an “unintelligible piece of shit”.

That Snyder has gotten a version to the screen at all is a triumph. He has found a way — although this is 160 minutes of a dense, geek-orientated blockbuster for grown-ups. Inevitably, but hardly catastrophically, it fails to truly capture the cascade of ideas and bracing cynicism of Moore’s writing. Yet there is a challenging, visually stunning and memorable movie here, moored halfway towards achieving the impossible.

It will also inevitably be judged from two angles: what it means for those that have read the comic-book, and those who will enter the cinema unequipped, say, with the history of the Minutemen, predecessors of the Watchmen, or the nature of Bubastis, Ozymandias’ genetically mutated lynx. Snyder nearly manages a film for both, but errs to the former. While necessarily filleting down the vast story to something palatable for human bladders, he is slavish to the original text. In his desire to encompass the novel’s strands, storylines and their payoffs are short-changed, leaving the film emotionally subdued, more an intellectual mystery than natural thriller.
And there is no compromising for the junior dollar: arms are snapped, heads hatcheted, and Viet-Cong splattered like flies by Dr. Manhattan, while Silk Spectre keeps her kinky boots on during mid-flight coitus. The entire atmosphere, dunking the cleaner lines of the novel into a pungently vivid, rain-sloshed superhero noir, lacquered in blood stains and midnight shadows, is superbly realised, a true world-unto-itself far more stimulating than Iron Man’s Windowlened sparkle or even The Dark Knight’s shimmering, Michael Mann-ish nightscapes.

In boldly keeping the book’s (then contemporary) 1985 setting fraught with Cold War paranoia — the plot teeters on the brink of nuclear war — the film becomes a less urgent period-piece. The political spine is now cute, as America taunts the Soviets as it has Dr. Manhattan as the ultimate deterrent. A hairless blue man with it all hanging out, he comes care of a mo-capped Billy Crudup that’s about 70 per cent successful — much better in close-up than the distracting mid-shots dominated by his blurry-blue CG cock.

Of all the Watchmen, it is Rorschach and Nite Owl who are most successful. Jackie Earle Haley finds the leery, psychopathic heartbeart of the faceless Bogart, and you half-wish Snyder might have stuck with Rorschach as protagonist rather than spreading the net so wide. No doubt the purists would have wailed. Patrick Wilson, too, is just right as the tortured Owl, a hero bereft in his own identity. It is Mathew Goode as oddball Ozymandias, and Malin Ackerman as Silk Spectre who botch line-readings, ill-at-ease in latex that is part suit and part joke.

Which should tell you Snyder has caught the novel’s provocative mindset. Fundamentally, Moore was asking how a universe of costumed crime fighters might actually work. A quest borrowed by Nolan for his Batman rethink. Here, though, there is dark satire: Batman (now Nite Owl) can’t get it up, impotent without his suit on; Wonder Woman (now Silk Spectre) carries the mountain of her mother’s guilt (a previous Silk Spectre marooned in old age); Superman (now Dr. Manhattan) has taken on the unreachable guise of a god. Best of all, there is Philip Marlowe (now Rorschach), with his do-or-die morality and Taxi Driver voiceover, the most hideously human of the bunch. Holed up in the clink, the inmates try to dispose of the despised crime-fighter. Unmasked and dead-eyed, Earle Haley turns to his foe and, shortly before dousing him in boiling chip fat, chillingly delivers Moore’s deathly magic: “None of you understand. I’m not locked up in here with you. You’re locked up in here with… ME!” And he’s the hero.


Verdict
Okay, it isn’t the graphic novel, but Zack Snyder clearly gives a toss, creating a smart, stylish, decent adaptation, if low on accessibility for the non-convert.




Edited By MovieWes on 1235775234
"Young men make wars and the virtues of war are the virtues of young men: courage and hope for the future. Then old men make the peace, and the vices of peace are the vices of old men: mistrust and caution." -- Alec Guinness (Lawrence of Arabia)
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So far it has 80% on the RT meter with 20 fresh reviews and five rotten ones. Metacritic doesn't have an average yet.
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Watchmen (18)

The "unfilmable" superhero film has landed...

BY: Chris Hicks Feb 24th 2009

Would it ever arrive? Or miss us completely?

Travelling towards us with the agonising speed of an incoming meteor we’ve stared at for fully 23 years, Watchmen finally hits the screen as something fanboys could only have dreamed of: a labour-of-love epic, stylish, violent and very, very faithful.

From the opening strum of Bob Dylan’s ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’, director Zack Snyder’s adaptation of Alan Moore’s graphic novel is a comic-book movie like no other.

His brilliant opening montage effortlessly introduces a very different version of the 20th Century: masked men in Halloween outfits arrest criminals before being outlawed, sectioned and murdered; a stark-naked blue demi-god helps America win the Vietnam War; Nixon remains US president and the world teeters on the brink of nuclear war.

It’s deft, startling and maybe the finest sequence in the film.

Weirdly, Watchmen handed Snyder the polar-opposite problem to the one he solved in adapting Frank Miller’s throwaway Spartan battle-royale 300: too much story instead of not enough.

Cross-cutting between flashbacks that zing from the ’40s to the ’80s, multiple characters and story-strands that phase from Earth to Mars, Snyder unravels an unwieldy on-screen narrative that’s actually nothing like a superhero flick.

It’s a PT Anderson drama in a mask; an ensemble of Hollywood’s finest character actors playing soul-sick men and women locked in mortal combat with their traumatic pasts.

Stan Lee was wrong: with great power comes great loneliness. Even under a luminous layer of CG muscle, Billy Crudup’s beautifully subtle performance hides electric flickers of pain in the impassive face of quantum superman Dr Manhattan.

Grey’s Anatomy star Jeffrey Dean Morgan finds sympathy for the devil in his amoral sociopath The Comedian, seen raping and murdering his way through three decades.

Brit fop Matthew Goode initially looks too weak to play the megalomaniacal Adrian Veidt, but he grows with arrogant assurance inside his role as “the smartest man in the world”.

Little Children’s Patrick Wilson is nervy and bruised as Dan Dreiberg, who used to fight crime as Batman-a-like Nite Owl, but now battles impotence instead.

Admittedly, Malin Akerman’s reluctant Silk Spectre - caught in an insane love triangle between Manhattan and Dreiberg - makes less impact than her queen-bee latex fetish costume.

But it’s Wilson’s Little Children co-star Jackie Earle Haley who’s the real stunner, emerging from an ink-blot mask to nail the sadistic self-hatred of misanthropic detective Rorschach.

That’s one reason Watchmen is so impressive - you can feel the level of love and the lack of compromise. Alan Moore’s graphic novel ripped up the rule-book for superheroes: sex, murder, no happy endings.

Snyder’s Watchmen almost does the same for superhero movies. The director follows Alan Moore’s novel at a safe distance, matching the original framings and shots while animating them with cinematic verve.

It’s dark but not realistic, serious but hyper-stylised. From Nixon’s prosthetic nose to the rain-soaked artificial backdrops, Watchmen always feels like a comic-book movie.

Which is probably the only way Snyder could get away with this kind of violence. Watchmen is unquestionably the most brutal comic-book movie ever made: bullets puncture skulls, faces crunch, a man is burned to death with cooking fat, splatty eviscerations leave blood and bones dripping off the walls and ceilings... Fantastic Four this ain’t.

Snyder unwinds every bone-splintering blow with copious slo-mo combined with concussive shifts in frame rate. Truth is, he leans too hard on that slo-mo button - not least in Watchmen’s worst scene: cringy porny sex bafflingly scored to ‘Hallelujah’.

But it’s a minor dent. Driven forward by an amazing time-capsule soundtrack - Nat King Cole, Simon & Garfunkel, Hendrix - Watchmen never loses its propulsion.

In fact, for anyone who hasn’t read the graphic novel, there’s too much here to take in one sitting. Then again, Moore’s novel is dense, detailed and designed to be chewed rather than swallowed whole.

Maybe that’s why Snyder’s adaptation never soaks up the book's full weight of grim humour and human tragedy. Only a near-perfect sequence revealing the life, death and rebirth of Dr Manhattan captures a genuinely emotional throb.

But a masterpiece has already found its perfect medium. And like the book, Snyder’s Watchmen still demands to be revisited - and on DVD with yet more footage.

So do yourself a favour. Before you watch Snyder film the unfilmable, go read the greatest graphic novel ever written. Then you can decide whether you miss ‘The Squid’.

Jonathan Crocker

Verdict:

Not just another superhero movie. Gripping onto sex, violence and angst, it’s hard to imagine anyone watching the Watchmen as faithfully as Zack Snyder’s heartfelt, stylised adap. Uncompromising, uncommercial and unique.
"Young men make wars and the virtues of war are the virtues of young men: courage and hope for the future. Then old men make the peace, and the vices of peace are the vices of old men: mistrust and caution." -- Alec Guinness (Lawrence of Arabia)
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Another positive review from the Times UK...

Watchmen: the first review

Kevin Maher

Finally, after 23 years of tortured development, pinging from studio to studio, star to star, and even courtroom to courtroom, the Watchmen adaptation has arrived on screen. It’s not for the faint-hearted — and, despite the preponderance of Spandex outfits, capes and costumes, not for the kids either.

The movie, a 2¾ hour epic that had its world premiere in Leicester Square last night, is based on Alan Moore’s and Dave Gibbons's seminal graphic novel about a group of ex-superheroes coming to terms with themselves and an impending nuclear doomsday. For more than two decades a big screen adaptation has been the maddeningly elusive goal of directors such as Terry Gilliam and Darren Aronofsky, and actors such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Joaquin Phoenix.

Even when this $100 million version, directed by Zack Snyder, became the centre of a court battle between Hollywood studios (one accused the other of copyright violation, and blocked the movie’s release) it only added to the sense that Watchmen would never see the inside of a cinema.

The film that has emerged, however, is a mesmerising and brutalising experience, and will be, for some at least, more than worth the wait. Set in a mid-Eighties Manhattan of the comic book imagination, where “costumed vigilantes” have changed the course of US history (Nixon is saved, the Vietcong defeated, etc), the dense narrative unfolds as a whodunnit in the head of a psychopathic do-gooder called Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley). In Stygian nightscapes reminiscent of Taxi Driver and Seven, Rorschach visits his four former crime-fighting buddies, including Matthew Goode’s brainiac businessman Ozymandias and Malin Akerman’s killer femme Silk Spectre, in an attempt to expose a secret assassin who’s nurturing apocalyptic plans for the entire Eastern seaboard.

Along the way, limbs are broken, bones are smashed and skulls split as the film earns its unprecedented 18 certificate (the supposedly ultraviolent Dark Knight was a 12A). And it’s not just blood and guts. There is unwanted pregnancy, erectile dysfunction and deep sexual anxiety too. Patrick Wilson’s Nite Owl, for instance, cannot “perform” unless he has beaten up some criminals first, while Billy Crudup’s fluorescent blue Dr Manhattan, complete with exposed genitalia, offers kinky yet loveless sex to Silk Spectre.

Add to this some startlingly incisive monologues on fascism, free will and American democracy, and you have a movie that is reaching utterly beyond the confines of its genre.

On the downside, the deadly serious nature of the project only highlights the many titter-inducing splashes of camp — the lair of Ozymandias, in particular, is very Kerpow!-era Batman. But as the first attempt to make a truly post-adolescent comic book movie, Watchmen is, literally, peerless.
"Young men make wars and the virtues of war are the virtues of young men: courage and hope for the future. Then old men make the peace, and the vices of peace are the vices of old men: mistrust and caution." -- Alec Guinness (Lawrence of Arabia)
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Now a positive review, from Emanuel Levy...

Watchmen B+

"Watchmen," Zack Snyder's eagerly awaited screen adaptation of Alan Moore's cult graphic novel is the movie event of the season. Dense, provocative, excessively brutal and ultra-violent, "Watchmen" is decidedly not kids or adolescents fare. This visionary movie goes way beyond Snyder's previous effort, the box-office hit "300," which by comparison seems rather simple, straightforward, too dependent on digital effects, and (intentionally or unintentionally) campy.



The best compliment I can pay Snyder's work, which is not flawless, is to say that it's original, or matchless by any standards of comic book pictures, including the "Batman" franchise. Hardcore fans of the source material book may quibble with some of the changes made, including the different ending, but there is much to admire about the picture, which ultimately does capture the spirit of the novel. I also expect the movie to divide critics. Whether you like or dislike the movie, at the end of this intensely sensorial experience, you will be overwhelmed by the barrage of images and ideas. For some, it will be an elating adventure, for others a frustrating experience of keeping in synch with the briskly-paced saga and numerous characters and themes.



It's been a turbulent road from page to screen. First, the novel was considered "truly unfilmable," and countless directors, such as the fantasist Terry Gilliam and the postmodernist Darren Aronofsky, have expressed their wish to "translate" the novel to the big screen. Then there were court battles between Warner, which is releasing the picture domestically, and Fox about copyrights to the property. But now that the movie is finally playing in a plex near you, it's time to put this excess baggage aside and to enjoy the film for what it is, or for what it tries to do and mostly succeeds.



Released in early March, amidst mindless comedies and inept actioners, "Watchmen" does Hollywood proud as a serious, even grave meditation about all the issues that continue to concern us: legitimate authority, use and abuse of power, science and technology, the role of the government in securing and regulating our everyday lives. And the movie doesn’t neglect more personal or domestic issues, such as trust and love, sex and happiness. Two of the film's strongest sequences deal explicitly with sexual gratification and sexual and emotional impotence.



"Watchmen" is nothing if not ambitious, fresh, and challenging work, commanding our attention by delivering various pleasures, from the most visceral to the most cerebral. Here is an ensemble-driven picture that contains so many stories and stories within stories that it may be hard to follow for viewers accustomed for more conventional and linear mainstream entertainment.



A key to the success of the film is in its unusual casting. There are no major stars, not even actors of the caliber of Christian Bale, Robert Downey Jr. and Tobey Maguire. Instead, the characters are populated by talented character actors on the order of Jackie Earle Haley, Patrick Wilson, Billy Crudup, and Matthew Goode, actors who literally disappear within their ever-shifting identities and masks. (the handsomer Patrick Wilson is deglamorized and at first barely recognizable).


Set in Gotham in 1985, "Watchmen" displays a world darkened by fear and paranoia, where individuals who once donned masks to fight crime now hide from their identities. It's a milieu in which the ultimate weapon, an all-powerful being, has changed the global balance of power, pushing the world closer to nuclear. In this apocalyptic context, facing impending Armageddon, desperate men and women conjure desperate measures and engage in desperate activities.



Spray-painted across a wall in a dark, gritty New York alley is a question that pervades "Watchmen": "Who watches the Watchmen?" And indeed, at the center of the feature is a moral puzzle: Who has the right to say what's right and what's wrong, and who has the right to enforce their decisions? More importantly, who should (and does) monitor those who decide what's right and what's wrong?



Playing the film's core group of "Masks," or adventurers, are Malin Akerman as Laurie Jupiter, aka Silk Spectre II; Billy Crudup as Jon Osterman, aka Dr. Manhattan; Matthew Goode as Adrian Veidt, aka Ozymandias; Carla Gugino as Sally Jupiter, aka Silk Spectre; Jackie Earle Haley as Walter Kovacs, aka Rorschach; Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Edward Blake, aka The Comedian; and Patrick Wilson as Dan Dreiberg, aka Nite Owl II.

In the 1980s, during the Reagan administration, there was paranoia about the Cold War and fear that it might excalate. Hollywood reflected these fears with a cycle of right-wing movies such as "Rambo" and "Red Dawn," all revisionist works that aimed to boost patriotism, even chauvinism.

Thus, when the tale starts, we learn that the costumed vigilantes have changed the course of history: Nixon is very much alive and still in office and the Vietnam War was a triumph for America (there are scenes of how the Vietcong was defeated).



Originally published by DC Comics from 1986 to 1987, "Watchmen" first appeared as a 12-issue limited comic book series. It was then republished as a graphic novel, which has become legendary. The blood-stained "smiley face" on the cover, the image of a clock face advancing one minute closer to midnight, the 12-chapter structure, were emblematic a richly complex work. Reportedly, "Watchmen" is the only graphic novel to win the prestigious Hugo Award and to appear on Time magazine's 2005 list of "the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present."



When it was published, "Watchmen" resonated with a generation raised with the prospect of nuclear war as palpable reality. The novel has been praised for reflecting the zeitgeist, giving voice to the anxieties, fears and awe of power, its uses and abuses, symptoms of paranoia, impotence, and paralysis experienced daily by average people considered to be insignificant by the power elite; there's a witty scene in the movie with Henry Kissinger advising Nixon about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.



Subverting, deconstructing, and then reconstructing the concept of superheroes, the movie introduces half a dozen characters, "real" people who deal with ethical and personal issues and struggle with neuroses and failures. Each is a symbol of a different kind of power, obsession, and psychopathology. In fact, Dr. Manhattan is the only protagonist among the wild and eccentric bunch who possesses superpowers.



The movie maintains the book's chief attributes, its intricate, multi-layered storytelling and dialogue, symbolism and synchronicity, flashbacks and meta-fiction. The screenplay, adapted by David Hayter and Alex Tse, keeps the novel's depiction of superheroes as human characters subject to similar social and psychological pressures as other, ordinary people. You could say that the storytelling itself has the nature of a clock, or clock ticking, dealing with the human condition in a way that interweaves elements of serendipity, coincidence, and timing.



(One day, a scholar should compare the uses and meanings of clocks in such diverse pictures as Zinnemann's 1952 "High Noon," the Coen brothers' 1994 "The Hudsucker Proxy," The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," and "The Watchmen")

On one level, the film is a complex, multi-layered mystery adventure, set in an alternate American society, in which costumed superheroes are part of the fabric of everyday life. The prevalent image is that of the Doomsday Clock, which charts the tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, and is watched with alarm as it moves closer and closer to midnight.

The opening sequence, a montage set to Nat King Cole's "Unforgettable" later intercut with Bob Dylan's classic "The Times They Are A-Changing," introduces the characters, placing them against a political context in which Nixon is serving his third term as president. An ultra-violent scene follows, which justifies the picture's rating, depicting in graphic detail the brutal beating and murder of the Comedian, ending with his crash on the sidewalks from the 32nd floor of his skyscraper building.



"Tonight, a Comedian died in New York," Rorschach writes in his journal. "Somebody knows why." Rorschach believes someone is picking off costumed heroes, of which The Comedian is only the first. He thus sets out to warn the members of the interconnected group that fought by his side--six souls tied together by fate and the desire to make their own brand of justice. His first visit is to Dan Dreiberg, who, as Nite Owl II, was his partner in the glory days of the Masks. Dan was the closest friend Rorschach has ever had. The police don't like Rorschach, and the citizens don't like him. He sees the murder as a reason the guys should get back together."



When the Comedian, one of his former colleagues, is murdered, the outlawed but determined vigilante Rorschach sets out to uncover a plot to kill and discredit all past and present superheroes. To that extent, he reconnects with his former crime-fighting legion, a disbanded group of retired superheroes, only one of whom has true powers. Rorschach unveils a wide-ranging and disturbing conspiracy with links to their shared past and catastrophic consequences for the future.



The voice-over narration informs us that it’s October 13, 1985. The tale then jumps to October 16, October 21, and so on. But the narrative is truly multi-layered, with flashbacks within flashbacks spanning four decades (from the 1940s to the 1980s), crisscrossing story strands, setting changes from Earth to Mars and back, and psychological histories constructed for each of the central characters.



Take Rorschach, the saga's most intriguing character. The only Mask to openly defy the Keene Act, which outlaws costumed heroes, he hunts and haunts New York's gutters for "society's vermin." Rorschach's moral compass knows only right and wrong. Though we live in a complex world with shades of gray, for him, the world is black and white, and no complexity or ambiguity are tolerated.



Rorschach's psychology and ideology are reflected in the mask he wears, with shifting, mirror image patterns of black and white, like the inkblots of a Rorschach test. Rorschach serves as the perverse detective of the story, driven by uncompromising pursuit of justice. A product of a broken family, he grew up on the mean streets, and then through events, both in and out of the mask, he became Rorschach.



Brilliantly played by Jackie Earle Haley (last seen in an Oscar-nominated turn in "Little Children," in which Patrick Wilson was a co-star), Rorschach is a particular type of (anti) hero, a psychotic misanthrope, motivated by hate and obsession, not your typical moralistic do-gooder as seen in "Spider-Man," "Batman," or "Iron Man."



Rorschach is contrasted with the Comedian, a cold killing machine devoted to doing unsavory jobs for the government, in times of war and peace. The Comedian sees the world as a dark place where acts of brutality or heroism are the same, making no difference. He represents the dark side of America, an undiscriminating American super-patriot who died in service to his country.



One of the most impressive and touching narrative strands is the transformation of Dr. Manhattan, his life, tragedy, death, and rebirth as a superbeing. A huge, glowing figure in blue shades, Dr. Manhattan is played with great nuance and subtlety by Billy Crudup. As member of the romantic triangle, he competes with Dan Dreiberg for the love of Silk Spectre, herself a femme fatale killer. Helmer Snyder juxtaposes the two lovers in two vastly different sexual encounters that bear humorous tones: While Dr, Manhattan "suffers" from erectile dysfunctionality (perpetual hard-on), Dreiberg battles sexual impotence and can only be aroused by particular acts. The sight of Dr. Manhattan, who transforms into a double character while making love is striking, frightening and macabre, and so is a later image of a quartet of identical Dr. Manhattan(s) parading with their huge penises.

Drawing on the visual vocabulary of film noir, most of the scenes in "Watchmen" are rain-soaked and nocturnal. I won't be surprised if Snyder and his crew have watched thoroughly such neo-noir classics as "Taxi Driver," "Blade Runner," and "Seven," to which their movie bears stylistic resemblance, though ultimately bears its unique signature.



So why, you might ask, is the film flawed and merits B+ or A-. For a number of reasons. First, it has an excessive running time of 162 minutes. Second, it is not totally accessible to viewers who are unfamiliar with the literary source. Third, While Haley is brilliant and most of the cast proficiren, Matthew Goode's performance, in an admittedly tough role, is not entirely satisfying. Fourth, the last hour, especially the long prison sequence, is not as strong ramatically as what preceded it. movie is ultra-violent, perhaps gratitously son, beginning with the first sequence, in which limbs are loudly broken or sawed-off.



As you may have heard, only illustrator Dave Gibbons is credited onscreens, and mucvh has been made from Moore distancing himself from this production (and Hollywood in general). Yet it's all relative. Of all the previous screen adaptations of Moore's work, including the Hughes brothers "From Hell," “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.” and most recently “V for Vendetta,” "Watchmen is the most impressive and the only one that merits the label of an ambitious art work.



This is a 2500-word review and space doesn't allow me to dwell on the richly dense and evocative score. So I'll just conclude by saying that Moore's "Watchmen" has been credited with elevating the graphic novel to a new art form, and now "Watchmen" the Snyder movie should be treated similarly as a new art form.



Cast



Laurie Jupiter/Silk Spectre II - Malin Akerman
Dr. Manhattan/Jon Osterman - Billy Crudup
Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias - Matthew Goode
Sally Jupiter/Silk Spectre - Carla Gugino
Rorschach - Jackie Earle Haley
Edward Blake/Comedian - Jeffrey Dean Morgan
Dan Dreiberg/Nite Owl - Patrick Wilson



Credits



A Warner Bros. (in U.S.)/Paramount (international) release and presentation, in association with Legendary Pictures, of a Lawrence Gordon/Lloyd Levin production. Produced by Gordon, Levin, Deborah Snyder.

Executive producers, Herbert W. Gains, Thomas Tull.

Co-producer, Wesley Coller. Directed by Zack Snyder.

Screenplay, David Hayter, Alex Tse, based on the graphic novel co-created and illustrated by Dave Gibbons and published by DC Comics.
Camera , Larry Fong.
Editor, William Hoy.
Music, Tyler Bates.
Production designer, Alex McDowell.
Supervising art director, Francois Audouy.
Art director, Helen Jarvis; set designers, Bryan Sutton, Allan Galajda, Jay Mitchell, Rodirigo Segovia, Peter Bodnarus, Andrew Li, Maya Shimoguchi, Rich Romig, Aaron Haye; set decorator, Jim Erickson.
Costume designer, Michael Wilkinson.
Sound, Michael McGee; supervising sound designer, Eric A. Norris; sound designer, Jeremy Peirson; supervising sound editor, Scott Hecker; rerecording mixers, Chris Jenkins, Frank Montano.
Visual effects supervisor, John “DJ” DesJardin; visual effects producer, Tom Peitzman; visual effects and animation, Sony Pictures Imageworks; visual effects, the Moving Picture Co., Intelligent Creatures, CIS Visual Effects Group. Special effects makeup, Greg Cannom.
Stunt coordinator/fight choreographer, Damon Caro.


MPAA Rating: R.

Running time: 162 Minutes.
"Young men make wars and the virtues of war are the virtues of young men: courage and hope for the future. Then old men make the peace, and the vices of peace are the vices of old men: mistrust and caution." -- Alec Guinness (Lawrence of Arabia)
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And now IGN, a geek-oriented movie website, the main demographic that Watchmen is geared towards. Bad review...

Watchmen UK Review
A shallow interpretation of the classic graphic novel.
by Orlando Parfitt, IGN UK

UK, February 26, 2009 - First off, this review is written from the point of view of a die-hard fan of the source material. Those who have taken the time to read Watchmen will know Alan Moore's tome is a superlative deconstruction of the modern comic book, with multi-layered characterisation, an ambivalent attitude towards superheroes and a creeping, gnawing sense of dread lingering on every page - the result of an ever-nearing nuclear war between America and the USSR.

This seminal work revolves around the titular 'Watchmen', a long-disbanded group of costumed crime-fighters who have fallen on hard times since President Nixon outlawed their brand of glorified vigilantism. The 'Maguffin' of the story is the murder of one of their number - The Comedian - who is seen thrown out of a skyscraper at the beginning of the film. Fellow costumed heroes Rorschach and Nite Owl - fearing they may be next - embark on a mission to find the murderer.

More important than the plot however, is the central idea: the novel asks: (as indeed does Mark Millar's Kick-Ass): "what if people decided to don outfits and fight crime in the real world?". The chances are that in reality these would be dubious characters on the edge of society, either sexual fetishists, sociopaths or full-blown psychotics. Combined with the potent spectre of the escalating Cold War and you have a fascinating, intelligent, extremely powerful concept.

Somewhere on the novel's protracted journey to the big screen, however, these attributes have been lost. That's not to say this vision of Watchmen isn't admirable in many ways, nor that it's ineptly produced and unengaging. But the finished film we saw had the same title as the book, an identical plot, the same characters and so on, but felt absolutely nothing like Watchmen. Make no bones about it, we were seriously disappointed with this film.

From the very start director Zack Snyder was eager to stress his fidelity to the graphic novel, especially after so many of Alan Moore's other works (V For Vendetta, From Hell, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) were so drastically butchered by the film studios. Therefore, apart from a different ending (that still retains the spirit of the book) and the cutting of a few small scenes, this is a virtual panel-to-shot adaptation.

The majority of the dialogue, camera angles and edits are lifted straight from the graphic novel. What has been cut however is the Black Freighter sequences (soon to appear as a separate, tie-in DVD) and the written material between the chapters. The problem is much of the characterisation, complexity and background of the characters was revealed in these sections.

Instead, shorn of context, the very human heroes of Watchmen, with their mixed up personal lives and mental problems, are about as complex as soap opera characters, the type of caricatures that Alan Moore parodied in his original.

This problem is compounded by Snyder's directorial style. His work is loud, brash and shouty, which worked perfectly for the mythical histrionics of 300 but feels utterly wrong for the brooding, melancholic nihilism of Watchmen. The intense, theatrical acting style of the protagonists actually makes the feel a bit camp.

Maybe it's unfair to compare the film to The Dark Knight, but Watchmen could certainly have done with Christopher and Jonah Nolan's ultra-serious approach to the source material. In a film that includes blue naked men meditating on Mars, a character who has a moving Rorschach test for a face and a villain who has a horned pet tiger, it takes considerable skill to make such events feel serious. And while this is never in question in the graphic novel it's certainly an issue in the film, with Snyder's pumped-up, brash technique making much of the film feel somewhat ridiculous.

This overblown style extends to many aspects of the film, from the visuals and the action (more below) to the choice of music. The scene in which Nite Owl and Silk Spectre make love after rescuing the family from a burning building - a fairly pivotal moment in explaining the bizarre, psychosexual dynamic of vigilantism - is reduced to a fetishistic comedy moment through the use of Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah', which drew guffaws from the audience. What's more, it's not the only moment that gets a laugh when it really shouldn't.

As you would expect from the director, there are several enjoyable action set-pieces and fight scenes but even these, despite the amped-up gore, feel sterile, over stylised and over-directed, with the helmer needlessly speeding up and slowing down the action. The sense of danger and realism seen in the likes of Casino Royale, the Bourne trilogy and Tony Jaa's films - truly pulse-quickening fights - is lacking here.

Visually the movie looks great, but again in a very artificial way. Snyder has smothered every frame with a layer of CGI sheen that distances audiences from the film. At no point do you believe proceedings are actually taking place in a near-apocalyptic 1980s, with the movie's unconvincing Nixon and JFK lookalikes only emphasising the artificiality of it all. Dave Gibbons' original artwork managed to combine grimy and baroque locations with an expressive, eclectic, almost delirious colour palette. By contrast, Watchmen is glossy and almost tasteful; indeed, it almost feels like an overlong music video.

Admittedly this is criticism is based on a fan's point of view but it is also difficult to see how the film would appeal to those unaware of the graphic novel. While screenwriters David Hayter and Alex Tse do an admirable job of compressing the story into a two-and-a-half hour movie, the somewhat labyrinthine plot - with multiple flashbacks - will still be struggle for the uninitiated. Indeed, it's difficult to imagine what he average punter will really make of the film. We suspect for many it will be disinterested bemusement at the over-complicated story and unlikable characters.

That said, there are a few moments that worked well: the fantastic credit sequences showing a potted history of costumed heroes to the tune of Dylan's 'Blowin' in the Wind'; Rorschach's scenes in jail; the origin of Dr. Manhattan (perhaps it's no surprise all these were shown in the 20 minute preview we saw last year).

Watchmen, on its own terms, is still an enjoyable, reasonably thought-provoking entry into the genre. In fact we'd go as far as to say it's a decent comic book film, but the problem is the graphic novel isn't just a decent comic book, it's arguably the best graphic novel ever written. As such this could have been a masterpiece but, ultimately, the filmmakers failed to nail the tone of the source material. This movie is a shallow interpretation of Watchmen, shorn of sophistication or literary density. Worst of all, watching the film makes you wonder whether the source material was actually any good to begin with.

2 out of 5 Stars
"Young men make wars and the virtues of war are the virtues of young men: courage and hope for the future. Then old men make the peace, and the vices of peace are the vices of old men: mistrust and caution." -- Alec Guinness (Lawrence of Arabia)
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The Hollywood Reporter and Variety have reviewed the film, both pans

First, the Hollywood Reporter weighs in...

Film Review: Watchmen
By Kirk Honeycutt, February 26, 2009 03:35 ET

Bottom Line: Ouch.
It's not easy being a comic book hero these days. The poor boys have taken their lumps in "Hancock," "The Dark Knight" and even "Iron Man." Self-doubt, angst and inadequacies plague them. And now comes "Watchmen." Its costumed superheroes, operating in an alternative 1985, are seriously screwed up -- and so is their movie. If anyone were able to make a nine-figure movie, something like "Watchmen" would have been the opening-night film at the Sundance Film Festival.

As stimulating as it was to see the superhero movie enter the realm of crime fiction in "The Dark Knight," "Watchmen" enters into a realm that is both nihilistic and campy. The two make odd companions. The film, directed by Zack Snyder ("300"), will test the limits of superhero movie fans. If you're not already invested in these characters because of the original graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, nothing this movie does is likely to change that predicament.

That's bad news for Warner Bros. and Paramount, which hold domestic and international rights, respectively. Opening weekends everywhere will reflect the huge anticipation of this much-touted, news-making movie. After that, the boxoffice slide could be drastic.

Snyder and writers David Hayter and Alex Tse never find a reason for those unfamiliar with the graphic novel to care about any of this nonsense. And it is nonsense. When one superhero has to take a Zen break, he does so on Mars. Of course he does.

The film opens with a brutal killing, then moves on to a credit-roll newsreel of sorts that takes us though the Cold War years, landing us in 1985 when Nixon is in his third term, tipping us that we're in an alternate 1985 America, where our superheroes have taken care of Woodward and Bernstein and other forces have evidently taken care of the U.S. Constitution.

The opening murder happens to a character called the Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), who was once a member of a now-banished team of superheroes called the Masks. Fellow ex-Mask Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) -- his mask one of perpetually shifting inkblots -- takes exception to his old colleague's death. He believes the entire society of ex-crime-fighters is being targeted even as the Doomsday Clock -- which charts tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union that could lead to nuclear war -- nears midnight.

His investigation and renewed contacts with former buddies fills us in on the complicated histories and problematic psychiatric makeups of these colleagues.

It's all very complicated but not impenetrable. We pick up the relationships quickly enough, but soon realize these back stories owe more to soap operas than to superhero comics.

The thing is, these aren't so much superheroes as ordinary human beings with, let us say, comic-book martial arts prowess. The one exception is Billy Crudup's Jon Osterman, aka Dr. Manhattan, who in true comic book fashion was caught in a laboratory accident that turned him into a scientific freak -- a naked, glowing giant, looking a little bit like the Oscar statuette only with actual genitals -- who has amazing God-like powers.

These powers are being harnessed by an ex-Mask, Matthew Goode's menacing though slightly effeminate industrialist Adrian Veidt.

When Dr. Manhattan's frustrated girlfriend, yet another former Mask, Malin Akerman's Laurie Jupiter, can't get any satisfaction from Dr. M, she turns to the former Nite Owl II, Dan Dreiberg, who seems too much of a good guy to be an actual superhero, but he does miss those midnight prowls.

The point is that these superheroes, before Nixon banned them, were more vigilantes than real heroes, so the question the movie poses is, ah-hah, who is watching these Watchmen? They don't seem too much different from the villains.

Which also means we don't empathize with any of these creatures. And what's with the silly Halloween getups? Did anyone ever buy those Hollywood Boulevard costumes?

The violence is not as bad as early rumors would have one believe. It's still comic book stuff, only with lots of bloody effects and makeup. The real disappointment is that the film does not transport an audience to another world, as "300" did. Nor does the third-rate Chandler-esque narration by Rorschach help.

There is something a little lackadaisical here. The set pieces are surprisingly flat and the characters have little resonance. Fight scenes don't hold a candle to Asian action. Even the digital effects are ho-hum. Armageddon never looked so cheesy.

The film seems to take pride in its darkness, but this is just another failed special effect. Cinematographer Larry Fong and production designer Alex McDowell blend real and digital sets with earthen tones and secondary colors that give a sense of the past. But the stories are too absurd and acting too uneven to convince anyone. The appearances of a waxworks Nixon, Kissinger and other 1980s personalities will only bring hoots from less charitable audiences.

Looks like we have the first real flop of 2009.
------------

Now Variety...

Watchmen
By JUSTIN CHANG

A Warner Bros. (in U.S.)/Paramount (international) release, presented in association with Legendary Pictures, of a Lawrence Gordon/Lloyd Levin production. Produced by Gordon, Levin, Deborah Snyder. Executive producers, Herbert W. Gains, Thomas Tull. Co-producer, Wesley Coller. Directed by Zack Snyder. Screenplay, David Hayter, Alex Tse, based on the graphic novel co-created and illustrated by Dave Gibbons and published by DC Comics.

Laurie Jupiter/Silk Spectre II - Malin Akerman
Dr. Manhattan/Jon Osterman - Billy Crudup
Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias - Matthew Goode
Sally Jupiter/Silk Spectre - Carla Gugino
Rorschach - Jackie Earle Haley
Edward Blake/Comedian - Jeffrey Dean Morgan
Dan Dreiberg/Nite Owl - Patrick Wilson

Finally unleashed from a much-publicized rights dispute between Fox and Warner Bros., “Watchmen” is less a fully realized comicbook epic than a sturdy feat of dramatic compression. Fans of Alan Moore’s landmark graphic novel, concerning a ring of Gotham superheroes brought out of retirement by an impending nuclear threat, will thrill to every pulpy line of dialogue and bloody act of retribution retained in director Zack Snyder’s slavishly faithful adaptation. But auds unfamiliar with Moore’s brilliantly bleak, psychologically subversive fiction may get lost amid all the sinewy exposition and multiple flashbacks. After a victorious opening weekend, the pic’s B.O. future looks promising but uncertain.
Only illustrator Dave Gibbons is credited onscreen with authorship of the 12-part novel, first published in single issues by DC Comics from 1986-87. As with previous adaptations of his work (“From Hell,” “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” and “V for Vendetta”), Moore, no friend to Hollywood, has distanced himself from this much-anticipated take on his notoriously unfilmable magnum opus.

Set in an alternate 1985, with Richard Nixon still in office and nuclear war with the Soviet Union imminent, it’s a densely plotted, sociopolitically charged tale of costumed crime-fighters driven to existential despair by a world that seems both hard to save and hardly worth saving. Though it cries out for equally audacious cinematic treatment, the novel instead has been timidly and efficiently streamlined by David Hayter (“X-Men,” “X2: X-Men United”) and Alex Tse, who struggle to cram as many visual and narrative details as possible into the film’s 161 minutes.

Before it becomes a meditation on the nature and value of heroism in uncertain times, “Watchmen” is, first and foremost, a whodunit. The victim is Edward Blake (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), formerly a vigilante known as the Comedian, who’s attacked by a masked intruder in his upper-story New York apartment and hurled to his death in suspended slow-motion. The murder triggers a reunion of sorts for several of the Comedian’s associates, who, before Nixon outlawed “masks” -- costumed superheroes -- were collectively known as the Watchmen.

These include Dan Dreiberg (Patrick Wilson), a nebbishy gadget expert who longs for the days when he fought crime as the birdlike Nite Owl; his ex-partner, Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley, face concealed by a mask bearing an inkblot pattern), a raspy-voiced sociopath with a knack for breaking tough guys’ fingers; smug golden boy Adrian Veidt (Matthew Goode), who has successfully licensed and merchandised his identity as Ozymandias, “the smartest man in the world”; and sexy Laurie Jupiter (Malin Akerman), who had a superhero’s legacy forced on her by her mother and predecessor, Sally (Carla Gugino).

And then there’s Laurie’s lover, Jon Osterman, better known as Dr. Manhattan. The product of a government accident that destroyed him yet also gifted him with regenerative superpowers, this blue-hued, godlike being has been deployed as a tactical weapon by the U.S. military. Inhabited with eloquent gravity and hyper-intelligent detachment (via motion-capture techniques) by Billy Crudup, and endowed with a ripped physique -- and, true to the source material, an often visible set of cerulean genitalia -- he’s easily the film’s most imposing creation.

Of the group, only Rorschach suspects a link between the Comedian’s death and the encroaching threat of global annihilation, and fears a conspiracy to eliminate the Watchmen entirely. Subsequent twists -- an attempt on Veidt’s life, a media disaster that sends Dr. Manhattan into self-imposed exile on Mars, Rorschach’s framing for murder -- only seem to justify the gathering paranoia.

These threads are played out in a tight chronological continuum with a series of flashbacks that delve into each hero’s origins and unique worldview. As in the novel, they provide some of the most gripping moments; Dr. Manhattan’s backstory, in particular, achieves a near-mystical awe thanks to the superb musical choices of Philip Glass’ “Pruit Igoe” and “Prophecies” (from “Koyaanisqatsi”).

From the clues and in-jokes embedded in Larry Fong’s widescreen compositions and Alex McDowell’s vaguely retro Gotham-noir production design to the meticulous narrative framework and whole chunks of dialogue lifted from the novel, there’s no question “Watchmen” reps some sort of ultimate fanboy’s delight. Whether it’s Dreiberg’s flying owl ship or the staggering glass palace Dr. Manhattan conjures up on Mars, the filmmakers have spared no expense in their mission to visualize every frame.

Yet the movie is ultimately undone by its own reverence; there’s simply no room for these characters and stories to breathe of their own accord, and even the most fastidiously replicated scenes can feel glib and truncated. As “Watchmen” lurches toward its apocalyptic (and slightly altered) finale, something happens that didn’t happen in the novel: Wavering between seriousness and camp, and absent the cerebral tone that gave weight to some of the book’s headier ideas, the film seems to yield to the very superhero cliches it purports to subvert.

While Snyder still exults in gratuitous splatter (sawed-off limbs, dangling human entrails, a very random display of adolescent vampirism), he demonstrates a less oppressive directorial hand than he did in “300,” avoiding that film’s ultra-processed digital look, and shooting almost entirely on carefully mounted sets (the pic was lensed in Vancouver). William Hoy’s editing is fluent and measured, even when it crosscuts rapidly in an attempt to echo the jumpiness of Gibbons’ comicbook panels.

While none of the actors leaves an indelible impression, Haley’s feral, ferrety Rorschach (narrating most of the film in gravelly voiceover) makes the most of his few unmasked appearances; Wilson is touching as a man emerging from physical and psychological impotence; and Goode is appropriately fey as the self-styled Veidt. Robert Wisden appears in a few scenes as Tricky Dick himself, complete with comically elongated nose, but doesn’t quite give Frank Langella a run for his money.

Slightly schizoid soundtrack is packed with hits from artists including Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, Leonard Cohen and Billie Holiday, some of which are used in too distractingly obvious or ironic a fashion; the most period-appropriate tune of the bunch may be Nena’s Cold War protest song, “99 Luftballons.”


Camera (Technicolor, Panavision widescreen), Larry Fong; editor, William Hoy; music, Tyler Bates; production designer, Alex McDowell; supervising art director, Francois Audouy; art director, Helen Jarvis; set designers, Bryan Sutton, Allan Galajda, Jay Mitchell, Rodirigo Segovia, Peter Bodnarus, Andrew Li, Maya Shimoguchi, Rich Romig, Aaron Haye; set decorator, Jim Erickson; costume designer, Michael Wilkinson; sound (Dolby Digital/DTS/SDDS), Michael McGee; supervising sound designer, Eric A. Norris; sound designer, Jeremy Peirson; supervising sound editor, Scott Hecker; re-recording mixers, Chris Jenkins, Frank Montano; visual effects supervisor, John “DJ” DesJardin; visual effects and animation, Sony Pictures Imageworks; visual effects, the Moving Picture Co., Intelligent Creatures, CIS Visual Effects Group; special effects makeup, Greg Cannom; stunt coordinator/fight choreographer, Damon Caro; assistant director, Martin Walters; casting, Kristy Carlson. Reviewed at Warner Bros. Studios, Burbank, Feb. 25, 2009. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 161 MIN.



With: Matt Frewer, Stephen McHattie, Laura Mennell, Rob LaBelle, Robert Wisden.
"Young men make wars and the virtues of war are the virtues of young men: courage and hope for the future. Then old men make the peace, and the vices of peace are the vices of old men: mistrust and caution." -- Alec Guinness (Lawrence of Arabia)
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