Watchmen movie reviewed

So I’ve just come back from a midnight viewing of the Watchmen. I sat through 2 hours and 40 minutes wondering why the film couldn’t be a little shorter. It doesn’t mean I didn’t like the film; I did. However, as someone who isn’t familiar with the original work, the plot was complicated and somewhat overwhelming. It’s the same sort of feeling that you get when you’re offered an extremely expensive and well regarded red wine. You sip it, it swirls around your mouth and you feel somewhat badly that you aren’t immediately impressed by it. You want to like it more, but your own inexperience lets you down.

The film is visually striking no doubt; its look and style catches your attention. It’s immediately immersive, easily persuading you that you’re in an alternate America where it’s still 1985, Nixon has been re-elected five times and the Cold War is plunging the world to the brink annihilation.

The Comedian's past reveals a complex anti-hero who's almost as much villain as he is hero.

The opening montage and the scene where you witness the murder of the Comedian are well done. The montage cleverly catches you up on how super heroes came to be and were later outlawed by the Keene Act. The sad end of many of the former costume vigilantes show that as America changed, super heroes became an anachronism. The murder of the Comedian is brutal and leaves you wondering how someone as physically formidable as the Comedian could be killed and who would perpetrate the crime.

The film then goes to Rorschach and shows how his paranoia leads him to uncover a conspiracy to silence not only the Comedian but many of his costumed cohorts. Jackie Earle Haley who played Rorschach was amazing. He didn’t have a single boring moment in the whole film; so much so that I think that a pared down Watchmen focusing just on Rorschach wouldn’t have been a bad thing. His voice and his mannerisms are part sociopath, part hero and dark vigilante. He reminded me a lot of darker side of Batman, someone who’s at the edge of insanity and is capable of superhuman acts because of his willingness to commit unspeakable brutality and his obsessive single-mindedness.

While Rorschach slowly uncovers the pieces to the conspiracy, the film takes the opportunity to explore the pasts of each character. The pasts of the Comedian,  Dr. Manhattan, Silk Spectre and Rorschach are revealed. These vignettes were really well done and  lend a lot complexity to each character while filling in details how each of them relate the conspiracy at hand. I loved how these were done, and only wish Nite Owl and Ozymandias would’ve been given similar treatment.

Learning about Dr. Manhattan's past was good. Having him in so many of the scenes in the last part of the film, not so much.

However, there were also parts in the movie that just seemed like they were in it to please the legion of fans that read the comic book series. The scenes with Dr. Manhattan and Silk Spectre on Mars for example just seemed tacked on. I didn’t quite understand why Dr. Manhattan would go to Mars and build a huge clock-type contraption and eulogize how much he’s disassociated with human beings. I’m sure there’s a lot of symbolism that I’m missing with that scene, but again, I didn’t read the comic book so I have to judge it by just what I saw in the film.

Also, I wouldn’t have minded if they would’ve cut or significantly trimmed the scenes between Nite Owl and Silk Spectre. While the two of them weren’t bad together, the chemistry between them just didn’t seem to be there. I realize that there’s this huge romantic subplot of Silk Spectre’s romance with Nite Owl and it’s affect on Dr. Manhattan’s decision to abandon humanity. But honestly, I think they could’ve cut all that stuff out. There were plenty of other scenes that showed Dr. Manhattan’s loss of his human perspective. The scene with the Comedian and Dr. Manhattan in Vietnam and the interview where it’s revealed that many of Dr. Manhattan’s friends were dying of cancer would have been plenty by themselves.

So in sum, I liked the film. I didn’t love it, but that’s probably because it was a little too complex and a little bit too long. I do recommend you seeing it, and I think the film will grow on you more on a DVD release where the special features can explain more of the background and perhaps show a different cut of the film.

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