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Watchmen (2009)

Director: Zack Snyder

Time Out rating

Average user rating

77 reviews

Movie review

From Time Out London

The most celebrated graphic novel ever written, ‘Watchmen’ takes place in an alternate 1985 teetering on the brink of nuclear Armageddon, as a group of retired superheroes reunite to track down mysterious masked assassin. The graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons was a self-reflexive comment on the entire genre and explored the fine boundary between the masked vigilante, the dirty civil servant and the dictatorial fascist. It has long been thought unfilmable: a direct translation, it was argued, would be overlong, punishingly bleak, bewilderingly convoluted and wildly uncommercial.

Which is exactly the film '300' director Zack Snyder has delivered. With the exception of an altered (and, it must be said, slightly improved) denouement, Snyder and his screenwriters have changed almost nothing from the original text. Costumes, sets, visual effects, the framing of shots and sequences, all the choicest lines of dialogue, even the music selections come directly from the novel. With all of these decisions taken out of the director's hands, what's left for Snyder to do?

Snyder's biggest impact is felt in the action sequences, which are also the film's weakest scenes: overstylised, repetitive and pornographically violent. Violence is the major theme of Moore’s book: it’s questionable efficacy in solving global problems, the conflicted, animalistic thrill of crushing one’s enemies. Snyder rides roughshod over such subtleties: 'Watchmen' may be the nastiest blockbuster ever devised. It luxuriates in snapping bones and literal explosions of gore. It's here that the gulf between comic and movie becomes most clear: Gibbons's drawings were often shocking, but they served a purpose. Snyder employs violence for the rush, and while this approach is sometimes brutally effective, it's also deeply crass.

The casting throws up mixed results: Patrick Wilson is agreeably vulnerable as Nite Owl, while Jackie Earl Haley makes for a supremely effective, unsettling Rorschach. But these two seasoned professionals stand out in a cast chosen for their physical similarity to Gibbons's drawings. Thankless female figurehead Silk Spectre demands an actress of real grace and vulnerability: Malin Akerman’s bland, soap-opera performance barely scratches the surface, while Matthew Goode's vacuous portrayal of the power-hungry Ozymandias suggests annoyed playboy rather than World's Smartest Man. But they can hardly be blamed: Snyder repeatedly fluffs the film's emotional peaks, blundering through on his way to another action setpiece.

But, try as he might, Snyder can't sabotage the sheer majesty of the source material. The breadth and grandeur of Moore’s globe-spanning narrative still astounds, and to see Gibbons’s iconic images writ vast and messy across the screen packs an undeniable sentimental punch. Like the book, there’s an impressive visual and narrative density here, cramming a bewildering amount of information into already overloaded scenes. The characters may be undermined by Snyder’s glib, hasty approach, but they still resonate, as do the overriding themes of power, corruption and human frailty.

But 'Watchmen' is still going to be the ultimate tough sell: there will be those who view the film as a bewildering mishmash of underexplored themes, thinly sketched characters and noisy, excessive violence. They're probably right: any work of popular art which demands prior knowledge must be deemed a failure. And yet, there’s something admirable about the entire enterprise: its ungainly size, its unrelenting weirdness, its willful, challenging intensity. Neophytes should probably steer clear, but for longterm fans of the source work this will be a hugely pleasurable, if ultimately unenlightening experience.

Author: Tom Huddleston 2009-02-26 12:03:53

Time Out London Issue 2011, 5 – 11 March, 2009

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User reviews of this film

Julia said...

Posted on Mar 08 2009 14:45 This adaption was better than every other made from comic books to cinema. They captured the feeling of the story and showed in the screen the same thing people felt when they first read Watchmen back in the 80s. Absolutely brilliant. I'm going to see over and over again.

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kennykenken said...

Posted on Mar 08 2009 14:13 Usman- that is the best review i've ever read!! Absolute genius. Nice to know that you can swallow a dictionary and survive. Hope you swallow a book on grammar next time...

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Lupus said...

Posted on Mar 08 2009 08:49 As an avid movie fan, but not having read the graphic novel, I was open minded. I had no preconceptions of what to expect either in terms of content or styling from the director. As an intelligent movie goer I enjoyed the story and the way it was delivered visually. But I found myself mildly irritated by the over stylised dialogue from many of the characters.
This may be true to the graphic novel. Something that works as art. but that's not how the film is advertised. Something that will be disappointing to many movie goers, expecting a blobkbuster action movie.
This became apparent about three quarters of the way through the movie, as people left in droves from the theatre I attended. It seems the days are gone when there was a clear line between a movie that had meaning, a good story and was able to be held up as a piece of art. And a piece of pure entertainment. These days, the lines appear blurred in favour of commercialism. Movies are no longer one thing or another. They are trying to be all things to all people. Unfortunately, trying to serve too many masters left me wondering what this movie actually is.
While the Social commentary may be true to the graphic novel. It did nothing for me. The "humans are going to destroy themselves" commentary has be done to death. It doesn't need saying again.
Having said that, I did enjoy the way in which the story was told. The style of the movie and some of the characters drew my interest.
All in all, I left the movie theatre thinking it was ok but nothing special. I would recommend it with provisos. I would not see it again myself. Nor will I be buying the DVD.

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JosiahP said...

Posted on Mar 08 2009 00:10 er..., Mr. Khawaja
"I AM GLAD I LIVE IN EUROPE AND NOT IN USA AND THIS MOVIE IS CLASSIC EVIDENCE of why i celebrate that fact as at least i am not responsible for a society in anyway that can create a distorted circus as deary as this death dream . "
just so you know, this was written and created by two Europeans... English actually!

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Jonathan said...

Posted on Mar 07 2009 18:01 i agree, the violent is disgusting, zack went over the top

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lanark said...

Posted on Mar 07 2009 17:51 You liked it then?

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usman khawaja said...

Posted on Mar 07 2009 15:27 VULGAR AND VIOLET
the most vibrantly vicious ,vivaciousloy vulgar and ostentatiously vile inadvertent comic book movie ever made .if it is at all possible to audio-visually torture someone to the extremes of their common sense and the limits of their endurance then this has the privelege of just about winning that pageant with as many methods devised in juvenile genius as possible to maime ,murder ,pillage and carnage every human emotion both physically and analytically to the point of hysteria.
human life in its mundane frustration might not be the exciting bauble for some disturbed pseudo intellectuals who purport to be violent enough to appease their tantalising boredom with corpses but to involve weekend cineastes in their infernal criminal plans and a hilariously nefarious embargo on both mortality and immorality is neither amusing nor funny as all it leaves in remains is a deadly boring void .
The watchmen will be reduced to cinders in the final nuclear holocaust and i hope all the multiple cemetry and burial SEQUENCES from this dismal epic will haunt the makers for eons for making a profoundly morbid and vulgar display of the american dreaM .
I AM GLAD I LIVE IN EUROPE AND NOT IN USA AND THIS MOVIE IS CLASSIC EVIDENCE of why i celebrate that fact as at least i am not responsible for a society in anyway that can create a distorted circus as deary as this death dream .
SLIMY ,VICIOUS PULP DRESSED AS SILVER SURFERS WITH A SICK EROTIC SCHIZOID BEHAVIOUR WHICH IS NIHILISTIC AND VOID TO THE POINT OF BEING NAUSEOUUS .
THE musical score is a jocular accesoory like matching a MACHOISTIC leather belt to a the robe of a buddhist monk and the lack of clothing for both men and women is the least of the problems as it is the apparel on display which is sufferreing from a personality disorder like every character here that is fitted into those perverted lycra leotards ,
I have never heard sound of silence and hallelujah in this light or even imagined they will be used as spoofs for a ludicrous self indulgent science fiction in the worst art forms possible to create by distorted cerebrums .
the spectacle of fireworks drubbed as violence with blood showers and crunchy bones with extra terrestrial aliens who look humanoid and humanoids who emulate aliens is a sickening cycle of some pseudo intellecrial prosaic sixties cerebrum influenced remarkably by the exotic drugs available in that charming era when jfk was shot by oswald and nixon desperately desired a nuclear war with ussr .
i wish it had transpired as today i would not be sufferring from a splitting headache with a hysterical spouse who is going to bring up this preposterous display of visual wastage to taunt me for the whole of 2009 and blame me for taking her to see this biliously surreptitious and sacrilegious science fiction which pretended to be a pseudo intellectual psychological treatise about viagra and kama sutra in space .
that leaves the story and script to be discussed in the behavioural aspects of crime and law and morality and order but that was hijacked by the superheroes who failed to retrieve any thing other then seminally atrocious prose and croaky hoarse narratives of monologues written by some deeply disturbed incarcerated and heavily medicated lunatic

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al said...

Posted on Mar 06 2009 23:17 Cant those under 18's just get fake Id's or sneak in or something, we did. The film was really very good. Its been a while since i read the comic but im sure it was really very faithful and they got about everything apart from the pirate comic stuff and some of the info at the chapter ends. The problems with the film was that it was pretty long,although I was so excited to see the film I barely noticed,and it did feel as though the film was rushing to get it all in. However this rushing to get it all in was only noticeable because some more key emotional scene seemed to be underplayed in favour of action scenes which although enjoyable did sometimes feel unnecessary. This is not to say the pace of the film is bad it is actually very good and set out well with an excellent nostalgic soundtrack from the 80's, but mainly before, as well as excellently timed flashbracks and voiceovers. The scenes between mother and daughter lacked emotional depth which was a little irritating as they were some of my favourite scenes in the comic, however I thought doctor Manhatten was handled extremely well and offered some of my favourite parts in the film which I thought were the least enjoyable in the comic. It is an epic film though and is forgivable in its small mistakes, the acting wasn't always perfect, but the film's soundtrack gave an authentic feeling of context especially in the great beginning of the film to the the timing of the times they are changing by Bob Dylan and the film is as good as adaptation as i think possible. So find a way to see it instead of this review!

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Nick said...

Posted on Mar 06 2009 22:40 You are all the most ignorant film critcs ive ever heard of. Ofcourse the Watchmen isnt subtle, its based on a comic book. And to say most of the people who are going to watch are under 18? really wow, that shows just how little you know about this story. Its been around since the eighties and its the most classic graphic novel ever written. Most of its original fans are middle aged much like you but cooler and not as bitter and snobby about movies, suck my balls. WATCHMEN RULES. (You are not allowed to comment me back unless you have read the book) ((which was named by TIME MAGAZINE as one the top 100 novels of the past century. ))

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lanark said...

Posted on Mar 06 2009 17:00 That's good to know. I don't think i'm seeing it until next weekend though, truth be told.

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frank said...

Posted on Mar 06 2009 14:52 well, we're all waiting with baited breath for your verdict, 'lanark'.

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lanark said...

Posted on Mar 05 2009 20:48 I haven't seen it yet, so I really can't say

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Jonathan said...

Posted on Mar 05 2009 20:22 to be honest i was really disappointed, i went to the premiere in london and it was very well made, but it did not have that much of an essence about it. this was made for a comonic, not for a movie, but well done to snyder and all the cast that made the impossible possible

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jamieridgway said...

Posted on Mar 05 2009 19:53 its an 18 film (crap)

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jamie said...

Posted on Mar 05 2009 19:52 this is crap its an 18 and think of the people under 18 who want to see cant!

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