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Hailed by Time magazine as one of the greatest novels ever written, Watchmen isn’t just another comic-book. Then again, right from the first few minutes, Zack Synder’s adaptation proves it isn’t just another comic-book movie.
Scored to Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are A-Changin', the brilliant opening montage slides us into a startling alternative 20th century: costumed vigilantes have been part of society for decades; a naked blue demi-god has helped Nixon’s American win the Vietnam war; JFK has been shot by a cigar-smoking government mercenary; the world is weeks away from nuclear war.
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Not exactly Fantastic Four, then. Brutal, complex and emotional, Moore’s story jumps from the ‘40 to the ‘80s, from New York to Mars and ends on a twist just too shocking to imagine on screen. Eight minutes longer than The Dark Knight, bloodier than 300 and angstier than a PT Anderson drama, Snyder’s hyper-stylised film goes for broke. In fact, it’s miraculously faithful.
Our advice? Read the graphic novel. Right now. Anyone who hasn’t will struggle to catch up. But what anchors Watchmen’s weave of flashbacks and storylines is its terrific cast of character actors. Most stunning is Little Children star Jackie Earle Haley, perfect as twisted masked detective Rorschach as he sets out to investigate who’s murdering his old friends.
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Glowing with CG muscle, Billy Crudup gives a beautifully subtle performance as Dr Manhattan, the impassive master-of-matter who can no longer connect with mankind. Patrick Wilson is bruised and convincing as Nite Owl, the middle-aged ex-crimefighter who now battles impotence instead.
Grey’s Anatomy star Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s amoral sociopath The Comedian nails some of the movie's most shocking scenes: war atrocities in Vietnam and an attempted rape of fellow superhero Silk Spectre (Sin City’s Carla Gugino).
That right, Watchmen doesn’t get an 18 certificate for bad language. Snyder goes full-tilt on the slo-mo violence: blood spatters, bones burst through flesh, arms are sliced off with a buzz saw, a jailbird is burned to death... The most brutal comic-book movie ever? It's between this and A History Of Violence.
So it’s all there. And yet, it’s not. Somehow, the emotion, black humour and tragedy of Moore’s story fails to make the jump from page to screen. Other niggles slowly emerge. Matthew Goode looks too weak to play millionaire intellectual Ozymandias and Malin Akerman's Silk Spectre II has little to do except squeak around in a latex fetish costume and gasp through the year’s most cringe-worthy sex scene.
Is Watchmen unfilmable? Most probably. It’s like trying to pack TV’s epic crime drama The Wire into a three-hour movie. But Snyder’s superhuman effort comes as close as anyone could have dreamed. Probably the most ambitious and unique superhero movie ever made.
Uncompromising, stylish and brutal. Not perfect, but definitely one of a kind.
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Starring Squirrel Girl!
