Movie Review - Watchmen

Like Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy and Alien 3 this film was in development hell for a very long time before an extended legal battle finally allowed its appearance on the silver screen. It may had made millions in both the US and UK box offices already but its still not a very good movie.

Based on an extremely obscure cult comic book series set in a parallel universe it catalogues the lives of a set of retired super heroes on a world where vigilante super heroes have now been outlawed after 40 years of service to their countries and their planet. Now someone is hunting them down and kills one then frames another for murder, the US is on the brink of Nuclear war with Russia (the movie is set in 1985 where Richard Nixon is serving his 3rd term in office) and the nuclear clock is set at 5 minutes to midnight.

The movie constantly moves forwards and backwards in time with no thought given to anyone who has never read the comics or knows nothing about The Watchmen, characters aren't explained very well and one in particular is made to seem very ambiguous about not being a very good person (The Comedian who I actually thought was being played by Robert Downey Jr) as we see him assassinate JFK and help end the Vietnam war, he is also seen to kill American civilians in the 1970's civil unrest race riots and appears to be enjoying his work far too much.

With the constant movement in time you are never exactly sure who is who and what is going on, characters aren't given the chance to develop onscreen much and your going to spend almost all of the over 2 and a half hours of the movies duration being extremely confused.

Confused and bored, as the very poorly explained plot (what little there actually is of it) is interspersed with fast action sequences almost immediately followed with long drawn out scenes full of very dull dialogue. Its very badly paced indeed, no thought seems to have given to how the movie should play out and it also seems to have not been cut at all. You get the feeling that what you are watching is everything the director filmed and nothing has been left on the cutting room floor.

The film does show characters like Dr Manhatten (at least you see how he gets his powers) developing a clean alternative to nuclear power & fossil fuels much to the chagrin of various captains of industry, this project is being funded and assisted by the 1st super heroes to ever reveal his real identity Adrian Veidt formerly known as Ozymandias.

The film has a few twists and turns which will catch non comic book fans off guard and ends with Russia & America uniting against a common enemy. I wont reveal who that is or any of the twists but if you can follow the film for any longer than 5 minutes at a time then your doing a lot better than I was.

The special effects are amazing but considering the films budget was $150 million they darn well should be, sadly it seems all the money was squandered on effects and nothing went on a decent script or hiring someone to adapt the comic books to a format that the non comic book geek could easily understand.

Terry Gilliam said it best when he stated the idea of making Watchmen "was unfilmable" and that by "Reducing the story to a two or two-and-a-half hour film seemed to me to take away the essence of what Watchmen is about.". When someone who made great almost unimaginable movies like 12 Monkeys, Brazil & Baron Munchausen tells you your concept is "unfilmable" then you should really listen to him.

Watchmen is a visual spectacle that is too long, badly cut, exceptionally badly paced and very badly adapted. More could be been done with Rorschachs narration which could have been utilised to explain the characters much better, also to have dropped the original Minutemen from the movie completely as their appearance just confuses the viewer as to who you are watching.

I guess if the movie is watched with brain disengaged most viewers will enjoy it on the action and effects alone but will get bored during the quiet moments and start to fidget way before it gets anywhere close to the closing titles. Cutting about 45 minutes out of the film would vastly improve its watchability and pacing, in its current form the nicest thing I can say is that it is bearable but only just. Personally I was left wishing for movies like Howard The Duck & Masters Of The Universe, thats how little I enjoyed this film.