Review #738: 'Watchmen' (2009)

Bringing Alan Moore's cerebral and sprawling novel to the screen was always going to a near-impossible task. It's very much an anti-superhero story, where the 'heroes' are merciless psychopaths, government weapons of mass destruction, or sexually impotent. Spanning decades and featuring snippets from books, comics and newspaper reports within the world Moore creates, any film adaptation simply could not match the level of details and authenticity of the much-lauded novel. Zack Snyder, a fan of the original, and a director who was just off the back of the surprisingly excellent Dawn of the Dead (2004) and the shouty, crass 300 (2006), puts all of his heart and soul into Watchmen.

Using a no-name cast, a convoluted and dangerously slow story, and an adult rating thanks to all those snapped bones and a massive blue willy, it's a wonder this ever got made at all. It was in development hell for years, with names such as Terry Gilliam and Paul Greengrass becoming attached and then quickly detached from the project, and even the nerve-jangling possibility of Arnold Schwarzenegger as the movie's only true superhero was banded around in the mid 1990's. It's almost impossible to think of a more faithful adaptation than Snyder's, often re-creating frames from the comic in the minutest of detail, and even including Tales from the Black Freighter, the comic-within-a-comic from the novel with the voice of Gerard Butler (this is a review of the 215-minute cut, which I feel is the best version out there). Yet, you could still argue that Moore's book is un-filmable.

The 1980's, and President Nixon is running his fourth term in office, and superheroes have been outlawed. Ageing government assassin The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a former member of two superhero groups named the Minutemen, is murdered in his home. Vigilante and wanted man Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) investigates the murder, and brings his theory that someone is hunting down retired superheroes to his friend and former partner Dan Dreiberg (Patrick Wilson), formerly known as Nite Owl. With the threat of nuclear war with the Soviets becoming frequently more inevitable, heads turn to Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), a neo-God with the ability to bend matter to his will. But when he learns that he may have given his friends and loved ones cancer, he flees to Mars, leaving the world vulnerable to complete annihilation.

The Watchmen world is thick and meaty, re-writing history as if masked heroes and super-villains actually existed. In the film's opening titles, we are treated to an impressive collage of famous historical events, such as the Moon landing, but here it's Dr. Manhattan photographing Neil Armstrong. It's a hell of a lot of back-story to fill in, and the movie spends most of it's time filling in the gaps between the 1940's and the 1980's. Luckily, the characters Alan Moore wrote so beautifully, are fascinating, and the extended segments dedicated to portray their personal evolution are arguably more interesting than the movie's main plot. These are not flawed superheroes like Batman or Wolverine, they are complete fuck-ups, getting sexual stimulation from violence, battering minor offenders to a bloody pulp, or, in Dr. Manhattan's case, literally losing every trace of his humanity.

Moore's novel made them a parody of the idea of masked superheroes protecting the weak. The Comedian especially is a piece of work, gleefully frying a Viet Cong with a flame thrower, while a giant Dr. Manhattan stalks the jungle vaporising any enemies in his way, helicopters whizzing by his head while 'Ride of the Valkyries' plays. Like with 300, Snyder way overplays it. The comic itself wasn't exactly subtle, but Watchmen the movie amps everything up to 11, and while this admittedly makes the film more exciting, it makes the themes heavy-handed and sometimes plain laughable. Dreiberg can only get it up for the Silk Spectre (Malin Akerman) after he's murdered some criminals, but when he finally does, Snyder captures it like a soft-core porn movie starring Shannon Tweed, with the cringe-worthy use of Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah' in the background. In fact, the entire soundtrack feels as if it's been picked by some stoner student with Jimi Hendrix posters on his wall.

It's no surprise that, after a very successful opening week, Watchmen plummeted once word-of-mouth got around. Audiences drawn in by the possibility of another superhero spectacle were no doubt left baffled by the existential musings of it's characters and the extreme darkness of the film's themes. Perhaps it was what the film deserved, as when it's good, it's the work of a true artist, and when it's bad, it's quite embarrassing. But it's the best that us fans are likely to ever get, and we must be thankful that a director who really knows and loves the source was on board, and insistent that it wasn't destroyed by the studio butchers. Snyder has also rounded up an excellent cast, with Haley and Crudup standing out especially (Akerman suffers from some dodgy delivery occasionally but she sure pulls off that costume). It will continue to divide it's viewers, but it'll be somewhat cherished by it's fans.


Directed by: Zack Snyder
Starring: Malin Akerman, Billy Crudup, Patrick Wilson, Jackie Earle Haley, Matthew Goode, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Carla Gugino, Gerard Butler
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie