RecoReview – Watchmen

Watchmen, the highly anticipated graphic novel adaptation from 300 director Zach Snyder has hit the movie theaters, and i got a chance to check it out this weekend with some friends.

Watchmen is a nihilistic view of an America where Superheroes are real, if only in the masked vigilante sort of way. But it seems as if this movie was built for the faithful fans and only them.

The movie itself is 2 hours and 41 minutes long, or short depending on where you are in the fandom. Snyder and crew have managed to pack in a lot of hidden goodies for fans of the film, and also managed to take the story progression of the graphic novel and adapt it perfectly to the screen. Most of the scenes in Watchmen are shot for shot with Alan Moore’s Masterpiece. The dialog scenes between certain characters have been fleshed out, and most of the material translated quite well.

Fans of the comic will be disappointed to see entire plot lines cut from the movie. The two detectives who investigate Edward Blake’s death have a much larger role in the comic itself, but here they are part of a quick 1 minute scene to set up the Rorschach storyline.

Speaking of which,  Jackie Earle Haley does an amazing job as Walter Kovacs A.K.A. Rorschach. He translated the obsessive and angry nature of the character to screen perfectly and managed to convey the very twisted nature of the journal entries almost flawlessly. In fact the movie itself is set up chapter style just like the comic. It drops the normal three act movie creation template in order to convey almost everything it can in its relatively short time frame.

This movie is built for fans of the comic. I had the advantage of having two people who had never read the book and me and another friend who had. My friend and I who were familiar with the material were stunned and pleased greatly with the film. The two who had not read the material were enthused, but felt that it had progressed too slowly and ran too long for the average comic movie. But that's the thing, Watchmen is not for the average comic movie fan. Its dark….very dark, and a good portion of the material has been sighted as being almost un-adaptable by most critics and fanboys of the comic book. However, just like V for Vendetta, this movie did a service to its original material and the actors involved were great at conveying a huge overarching world of decadence, violence, and civil unrest in the face of a looming doomsday scenario.

If you are a fan of the book, go see this film, you will not be disappointed. If you haven't read Watchmen and are looking for a quick way to understand everything…..this movie really isn't for you.

-Jon