Review: Watchmen

Billy Crudup, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Patrick Wilson, Jackie-Earle Haley, Malin Akerman, Matthew Goode, Carla Gugino. Screenplay by David Hayter and Alex Tse, from the graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. Directed by Zack Snyder. Warner Brothers. Rated R (nudity, sexuality, language, violence). 163 minutes.

* * * *

I had no connection to Watchmen prior to seeing Zack Snyder’s (300) new adaptation of the beloved graphic novel about a world run amok circa 1985, teetering on a Cold War meltdown, while a handful of has-been crime fighters face the threats of nuclear war and irrelevance.

Here is a movie so ambitious, well-imagined and shot in ways we haven’t quite seen before, that it is almost easy to overlook its flaws. Perfect? No. Bold and daring? You bet. There are scenes in this dark beauty of a film that left me alternately hair-raised and lump-throated; thrilled even. How often does that happen, even in an Oscar winner?

The first half-hour of Watchmen is pitch-perfect, including an opening credit sequence set to Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are a Changin’” and functioning as a revisionist pop fantasia, incorporating the good old days when the crime-fighting Minutemen were around for not only JFK’s assassination but Warhol’s Factory daze. It is oddly moving for a sequence so early in any movie.

The Minutemen’s moment in the sun was fleeting, undone by their own self-destructive natures coupled with a decline in society. They were masked superheroes all right, but mere mortals underneath, not unlike the Dark Knight himself, also a film which explored the deconstruction of the superhero in much the same vein, as a brooding, unfulfilled loner.

Formed post World War II, the Minutemen ended up crazy, dead or disillusioned, paving the way for the Watchmen, a new troupe that arose during the 1960s, but in 1985 have left the profession and blended into a Red-scared society, presided over by President Richard Nixon, serving his fourth term in office and about to blink with the Russians.

With the exception of scientist and laboratory accident victim Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), a hulking blue weapon used by the government to win the Vietnam War, the only other member whose alter ego is publicly known is entrepreneur and richest man in the world, Adrian Veidt (Matthew Goode), also known as Ozymandias.

When the broken-down Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is murdered, Roarschach (Jackie Earle Haley), a masked, growling figure wearing an ink-stained, shape-shifting cloth over his face, is determined to find out who is behind it all, and what the true motivation is. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that world domination is at stake. But does someone also want the Watchmen dead?

Meanwhile, the original Silk Spectre (marvelous Carla Gugino) chain smokes, reminiscing about her days as a hero while her daughter, Silk Spectre II (Malin Akerman), wrestles with the challenges of having a love affair with big, blue, nude Dr. Manhattan, so clever he can make love to her while multi-tasking quantum physics in a different room.

Soon Silk Spectre II finds herself in the arms of paunchy Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson, underplaying effectively), and the two are having passionate sex, but only after donning their former aliases and obliterating a prison population during a jail break. Nothing like violence, crushed elbows and bullets as a turn-on.

There’s more—a lot more, and in a densely plotted 163 minutes, director Snyder lavishly creates a world that at times calls to mind seminal sci-fi classic Bladerunner with rain-slicked Manhattan streets and frames that expertly incorporate equal parts darkness and steam. This complexity extends to the narrative, which regresses to explore the back stories of each of the Watchmen, all absorbing. But above all, Watchmen is a film about visuals.

Consider Dr. Manhattan’s glass complex on Mars, the red planet inhabited by the blue man, prone to musings on the value of being human, delivered in melancholy tones by the excellent Crudup. In one powerful moment, Silk Spectre II strikes the crystal abode, causing a fracture. The camera shoots into the sky, following the crack. The structure shatters while Dr. Manhattan protects his love from a rain of icy shards. It’s absolutely accomplished and memorable.

Watchmen is alternately a visionary trip, a grisly adult mystery, a contemplative riff on what it means to be human, a post-modern action film shot black spandex tones, an otherworldly piece of eye candy and a somber, satisfying requiem to the superhero.

In sublime juxtapositions of the cruel and the beautiful—severed limbs and hatcheted heads diffused by gorgeously serene Mars landscapes and two lovers naked against a cataclysm—the film becomes a high-order visual romp, inspired, reaching for original images and moods that sometimes create a measurable sadness.

On the downside is a sometimes flagging pace, Snyder’s reliance on overstylized sped-up, slowed-down kick-ass borrowed from the countless films and a lack of empathy with any of the many characters. Some, like the excellent Goode’s fey Ozymandius, are underdeveloped. Others, like Akerman’s Silk Spectre II, are poorly acted. Few could be called engaging or even heroic.

And perhaps that is the point. In a declining, misanthropic milieu on the verge of apocalypse, the problems of world peace and nuclear proliferation cannot be solved by the derring-do of comic book heroes, themselves aware of their failed role tempering society’s ills, trapped in their individual prisons – once shining stars and now on the slopes.

A great, imperfect film, Watchmen deserves its spot next to other revisionist superhero films of late, including The Dark Knight, Iron Man and yes, Hancock, which got points for originality even if its execution was muddled. These reluctant heroes, replete with personal contradictions and identity crises, are a deeper, darker breed of crime fighters. And a welcome one.

Highly recommended.

- Lee Shoquist