With all due respect to every film critic here’s my take on Watchmen. I’ll try to be brief.
Set in an alternate 1985 the film starts with the MacGufffin of ‘the comedian’ getting murdered.
The scene is fantastic, brutal fights with a beautiful soundtrack. We see the alternate reality, set to the most enjoyable credits ever, to Bob Dylan’s ‘The Times They Are A-Changing.’ America wins the Vietnam war, Nixon is elected for a third term.
From then on everything goes nearly according to plan.
For those of you who haven’t read the graphic novel, it’s 1985. Masked superheroes have been outlawed by something called The Keene Act. The death of The Comedian sparks the main protagonist Rorschach to conduct an investigation into who is behind this and a theory that someone is picking off masked heroes.
The film is well directed, no doubt, Snyder has pulled another out of the bag, the ‘unfilmable’ graphic novel. All scenes are well acted, reviews suggest some wooden acting, of which barely any is seen. Fight scenes are brutal and most watchable, none of the ‘cut as fast as you can’ editing that has plagued recent films and to top it there is a fantastic soundtrack to go with it, all from pre 1985.
As in the graphic novel, we find out about our heroes pasts, like an origin story, but in the midst of helping the story along. The film is amazingly faithful to the source material, some scenes sending goosebumps down the spine. (For fans mainly)
To be completely impartial I saw the film with a person who had never heard of the novel. After, I asked their opinion, and to my surprise they said “Fucking brilliant.” (Their chosen words)
My criticism of the film of the novel I love, is that I did think things were a bit rushed to cram into the 2hrs 45min. Rorschach, with his psychiatrist, Dr. Manhattan on mars and Adrian Veidt’s (look at Tales Of The Black Freighter) stories suffering a little, however the right parts were shown. Bit gutted we only briefly see the Bernard and Bernie relationship. The new ending stands up though, still makes sense and still get the same outcome.
I will be seeing this film again and probably one more time after that, it’s a lot of information to take in at once but mainly because Watchmen is one of a kind and it’s awesome!
© BRWC 2010.