Watchmen doesn’t ever match the level of Alan Moore and Gave Gibbons’ original graphic novel.
But, as a fan who has read that work three times through, I wasn’t expecting it to. I was expecting, at the very most, to see a decently constructed film that manages to get the message of “Watchmen” across, while appeasing hardcore and new fans alike.
Director Zack Snyder accomplishes this, and somehow fits this crazy, nihilistic and complex story onto a silver screen.
The entire concept of the “superhero” is broken down in this film, showing just how extreme a personality someone has to have to put on a costume and patrol dark alleys.
Rorschach, clad in a mask that’s a moving ink blot test (played by Jackie Earle Haley), is Batman if he threw away his moral compass and solved problems by torture and harassing anyone in his way.
Dr. Manhattan is the omnipotent Superman, except he has drifted so far away from his human companions that he can’t be bothered to dress around them, walking in the nude most of the time and wearing a drab black business suit when in public. He can deconstruct and reconstruct matter completely, but he has no way of connecting to his girl friend Laurie Jupiter (Alin Akerman), who also was at one point a masked vigilante as the Silk Spectre II.
Snyder takes this even further by creating a film that examines comic book movies, much like the original examined superhero comics.
Rorschach speaks in a gruff tone that shines a light on both Christian Bale’s performance in “Dark Knight” and Mickey Rourke in “Sin City.”
Gibbons also confessed that the rubber nipples on Ozymandias’s (Mathew Goode) costume are a jab at the Schumacher Batman films.
The acting is hit or miss, with Billy Crudup sounding almost bored as Dr. Manhattan, although that may be a result of him having to play an emotionless superhuman.
There isn’t any excuse for Akerman, who displays almost less emotion than Manhattan, and completely fails to make us care in one scene where she learns who her true father is.
Her mother Sally Jupiter (Carla Gugino) is even worse, creating two generations of annoying Jupiters.
All of this can be forgiven when it comes to Haley’s Rorschach.
He delivers two scenes that save this movie, one in a prison cafeteria where he growls, “None of you understand. I’m not locked up in her with you. You’re locked up in here with me,” and another towards the end that truly makes you respect not only Haley, but also Snyder for making you care so much for a character who is so mentally ill.
The movie has some problems, but I advise that everyone who is at least mildly interested in the trailers to take the plunge and buy a matinee, if only to see this crazy universe brought to life.
