Review: Watchmen

Watchmen is by far the most faithful adaptation of an Alan Moore comic yet to hit cinema screens – but does it trump The Dark Knight? Read on! Visually, this is the comic brought vividly and realistically to life, aided by fully realised sets and props rather than 90% blue screen and CGI.

It retains the essential structure of Moore’s work, telling the story in the order he set – meaning cross-cutting past, present and future narratives. The history of the Minutemen (the super hero team that predates the Watchmen) is superbly explained in the opening credit sequence after the death of The Comedian.

There are some nice additions by Snyder and the script adapters: a certain photograph in The Comedian’s apartment, the nods to Strangelove and Apocalypse Now, and some unexpected musical choices.

Rightly or wrongly, Rorschach (played with conviction by Jackie Earle Haley) is very much the crowd favourite of the piece – but much more so than in the comic. In choosing to excise some of his less charming traits and beliefs, Rorschach becomes a pint-sized Dirty Harry – with all the best lines.

Doc Manhattan is well-realised, cock and all, with Billy Crudup successfully conveying what little humanity is left within Big Blue.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan hints at the cynicism within The Comedian, but in so much that the character is seen only ever as someone else’s memory, there is little room for him to make an impact.

Matthew Goode brings an appropriately emotionless arrogance to Ozymandias, the most intelligent man in the world who also happens to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Dan Dreiberg/Nite Owl’s impotence, sense of failure and lack of confidence is almost caught perfectly by Patrick Wilson – but I sensed something lacking in his performance, as if he didn’t believe in the material at all times.

Indeed, there’s a sense that everyone’s trying so hard to be faithful to the source that they bring none of themselves to the project and so it lacks the spark of life. This is not helped by the best actors being in the most unfeeling/darkest roles; while Rorschach is the work’s black heart, Laurie/Silk Spectre – and her relationships with Doc Manhattan and Dan – should be the emotional core of the work (often her reactions lead the audience in the comic) and I’m afraid while Malin Ackerman carries off the look (boy does she!), she fails to give weight to the character’s emotions (notwithstanding that the decision seems to have been taken to make Laurie less hysterical than in the comic).

The decision to re-work some elements of the original story are right, and the streamlining of the story to an acceptable run-time is hard to fault, but the question remains: would the story have more relevance, re-positioned in time to more or less the current day (like, say, The Dark Knight)?

The heavy weight of expectation on this movie was such that the end result could never live up to it. Ultimately the greatest adaptation of Watchmen is the one each and every reader, comic in hand, envisions in their own mind.

Nevertheless, Snyder and his team have tried – and if they have fallen short of glory, it’s not for lack of trying.

There are so many great scenes from the comic that are realised so well, I was compelled to punch the air at least once – which is more than can be said for the likes of From Hell or LXG.

Like Dark Knight, this is muscular, tough stuff (the comic’s gorier elements transferred intact), but Watchmen doesn’t quite scale the same heights.
Score: 7.5/10