Watchmen Movie Review
Watchmen Movie Review
Who's watching the Watchmen? ...Horror fans!
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Even though Watchmen isn't a horror movie by any stretch, I know that genre fans will be in line at the box office either for the grue or the crew — there are some gory murder scenes in this gritty comic book milieu, and it's directed by Zack Snyder, who did arguably the best zombie flick reboot with his take of Dawn of the Dead in 2003.
Alan Moore's Watchmen has the distinction of being the only graphic novel ever to have won the Hugo… but will this adaptation for the big screen be a comic book movie good enough to earn an Academy Award? Probably not, but I must say I liked it better than Snyder's last outing (300, also based on the illustrated page). Looking rather like a glowing, bluish version of an Oscar, actually, is one of the central characters, Dr. Manhattan (played by Billy Crudup and augmented by helluva lot of computer chicanery). Manhattan was once a scientist, but in the 1950s, after a horrible nuclear lab accident, he becomes a towering, omniscient, otherworldly being trying to live in the mortal world and have "normal" relationships. Without pants.
Of course, this doesn't work out too well. As we follow him over three decades, Manhattan's lovers, friends and foes include flawed superheroes and antiheroes such as the flighty Silk Spectre II (Malin Akerman); a raving lunatic called The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan); a murderous masked man named Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley); vainglorious power-monger Ozymandias (Matthew Goode); and the kind and caring — yet kick-ass — Nite Owl II (Patrick Wilson). All of these physical forces converge over a brewing storm of love, politics, war, peace, time, evolution, and family. You know, just the light subjects.
Watchmen is a movie that can be taken in on several levels. Those who have enjoyed the book will obviously have lots more to nitpick or / and embrace, but if you have not yet read the almighty tome there is no need to be intimated: In anticipation I bought a copy of Watchmen, but I only read a few pages before I set it aside because it is so dense and pithy. I knew it needed my full, A.D.D.-free attention. So… I was a little worried I might get lost in the movie, yet I didn't (although sometimes I wasn't sure what was happening at the moment) and I wound up enjoying it overall.
There is a lot of Snyder's signature sex and death in this movie. Males and females shuck their clothes, and when it comes to the dying, no one — not even a child — is spared. In one grisly scene, junkyard dogs fight over the leg-bone of a little girl… foot still in patent-leather shoe. There is another bloody bow when a rancorous lifer gets both his arms chopped off and sprays red all over the prison bars. It's plenty dark, but there are moments of sick humor that may not exactly lighten things up, but will at least give you a break before the next ka-pow.
The casting is excellent, as is the cinematography, music, costumes, and basic attention to detail. Although it's quite grimy and gritty, there is still an over-glossed pop-culture feel to the Watchmen movie… it worked for me, but for those seeking a more pithy delve into these heroes and side-characters and miniscule plots from the book not explored, you may want to see this just once and then wait for the expanded, 3+ hour version coming to theaters in July.
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Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson
Latest User Comments:
| Yep! It's true... there will be an even longer version [url]http://scifiwire.com/2009/02/watchmen-will-come-in-long-extra-long-and-really-extra-long.php[/url] Sounds promising, but I think I'll wait for the DVD on that one. Even then, I may not have the attention span or the time -- for years, I've been meaning to watch all my LOTR DVD's to back, and still haven't done it. Staci Layne | |
| 03-05-2009 by stacilayne | discuss |
| my buddy went to LA for the press junket on this one. unfortunately they didnt allow photographers so i couldnt go. he felt bad for me and brought me back the press release notes woth Mathew Goode's autograph on it..... very cool. cant wait to see this despite how depressing its gonna be | |
| 03-05-2009 by urgeok2 | discuss |
| Whoah there's going to be a 3 hour version coming out? Don't know if I'd have the attention span for that. | |
| 03-05-2009 by Elvis_Christ | discuss |