RSS
Home
Who will watch The Watchmen? You know who you are.
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
'WATCHMEN'
Rating: *** (out of five)
'Watchmen' isn't a bad movie - at least from a technical and visual effects standpoint, it's actually a pretty good one. It' s just that.gif)
it's one of those movies that should come with a "For Invited Guests Only" warning on its poster. The legions of fanboys who have been salivating at the thought of the film adaptation of Alan Moore's seminal graphic novel will likely have their thirst satiated, and then some. The rest of us will just as likely be left blinking at the screen trying to figure out what the hell is going on, cringing at some of the wooden dialogue, wincing at the blood-spattering, bone-crushing (and apparently true to the source material) violence and finally - a full two hours and forty minutes later - limping out of the theater with a seriously numb tuchus.
Things begin on a decidedly promising note - an opening scene startles with your average, gruesome death-by-tossing-through-a-highrise-plate-glass-window. The tossee, we learn, is Edward Blake, aka The Comedian. Thankfully, for Jeffrey Dean Morgan, the actor who plays The Comedian, this is not the shortest screen stint in superhero history, as the character still manages to appear throughout the movie in flashbacks. And oh, does director Zack Snyder (the man who helmed last year's hit graphic novel adap '300') love him some flashbacks. I believe there are flashbacks within flashbacks, which, if you think about it, would be pretty hard to back your way out of.
But no matter - the first flashback here is actually mesmerizing. As the opening credits roll, Snyder flashes through the history of The Watchmen, a not-so-merry band of mask-wearing vigilantes trying to keep America safe in a dystopian alternate universe where Richard Nixon has managed to get elected President five straight times. The group, we learn, began in the mid-1900s as The Minutemen - The Watchmen are only the most recent incarnation - and as the credits fly by and Bob Dylan sings "The Times They Are A-Changin'" we see how the superheroes have dominated the global landscape on behalf of the good ol' US of A.
We wind up back in alternate-universe 1985. The Watchmen have disbanded and, as evidenced by The Comedian's grisly demise, may be being systematically eliminated. At least that's what Rorschach, the tough-talking, badass Watchman who wears a burlap sack over his head upon which Rorschach ink blots are constantly shifting, believes. Rorschach is far and away my favorite part about Watchmen - as played by Jackie Earle Haley, he's a growling, anarchic, walking punch to the gut of everything around him. As the movie starts, he's the only Watchman still Watching - trouble is, as it goes along, we come to realize he's the only Watchman worth watching, too.
As he tries to warn his former partners about the danger, the narrative of the movie starts to unravel - in succession we meet the rest of the Watchmen: Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson), whose superpower appears to be the ability to bore people to death; Silk Spectre (Malin Akerman) whose superpowers do not extend to her acting abilities; Ozymandias (Matthew Goode) who is the world's smartest man, and we know this because of his consistent ability to correctly spell his own name; and, last but certainly not least, Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup) a big glowing, naked blue scientist who was the victim of a horrid radiation accident and now has pretty much every possible superpower in the world except, apparently, the ability to locate a pair of underpants.
Aside: In addition to opening in thousands of conventional theaters this weekend, Watchmen will also be playing on IMAX screens. I would recommend the IMAX experience due to the visual wizardry going on in the movie, though I would further recommend averting your eyes from the IMAX screen a bit whenever the good blue Doctor strolls, naked as a a jaybird, onto the scene. I am sure my opinions on this movie will ruffle the feathers of many Watchmen devotees, but I think I can make the following statement as fact: This is definitely the first IMAX movie to prominently feature an enormous blue penis.
But back to the movie, which takes an ordinate amount of time building up to its actual central plotline, such as it is. It starts and stops, with myriad digressions to explain each character's backstory - some, like any involving Akerman's Silk Spectre, are dull and desultory, while others, like any involving Rorshcach, are electrifying. Are you getting the sense that I would have preferred a whole movie about Rorschach? You gotta love a guy who, in a moment that clearly makes him the the frontrunner for 2009 Movie Line of the Year, growls this warning to vengeful fellow inmates when he's temporarily locked up in prison: " You guys got it wrong - I'm not locked in here with you. You're all locked in here with ME!"
Spectre, useless as she seems, actually propels the story forward (thank God someone does) when she forsakes her beau Dr. Manhattan to get together with Nite Owl (and such a "get together" between two superheroes has never been so explicitly filmed). The Nite Owl/Silk Spectre alliance puts the remaining Watchmen back in business and sends Dr. Manhattan off the deep end. His heart broken by Silk, and by the revelation that his radioactivity may be giving his loved ones cancer, the Blue Man teleports off to Mars for some introspection. Silk visits him on the red planet to try to talk him down, and talk him into helping the Watchmen uncover the dangerous plot that threatens his old planet, which must be saved. This is a superhero movie, after all.
Now do you see what I'm saying about "Invited Guests Only"? The plot here is labyrinthine, to put it mildly. An intimate knowledge of the graphic novel is all but required to follow it. And it's kind of a shame, really. There are moments in the movie when you can tell how cool the source material must be, how rich and layered with subtext it likely is - a cautionary tale about what happens when a society yields to its basest instincts, its darker desires. But the movie only hints at what must be buried within Moore's graphic novel, and its bloated running time may test the patience of even the devoted.
It's a strange review, but as more movies are focused and made for specific audiences, it seems to be one that I'm writing more and more these days - like 'Twilight' before it, for its core audience and for those who have been counting down the days and hours to its release, 'Watchmen' will probably be enthralling. For the rest of us: Watch Out.
Watch the 'Watchmen' trailer here.
Check out more 'Watchmen' coverage here.
Related Articles:
Comments
