Watchmen, by Warner Brothers, Paramount, and DC Comics.
Genre: action-adventure, crime thriller, superhero fantasy.
Rating: R for nudity, lots of bloody violence, language and adult situations.
Review by Wade Manns
I really liked Watchmen, based on the graphic novel of 1986 and 87 by Alan Moore and masterfully converted into a stunning motion picture by Zack Snyder, who also directed the graphic novel adaptation of 300, by Frank Miller. A lot less was taken out than I thought would be, such that almost the entire point of the graphic novel is crammed into just over 2 1/2 hours.
The story line takes place in an alternate 1980s, after the US won the Vietnam War thanks to the intervention of a very special superhero with amazing powers, known as Dr. Manhattan. This blue Superman was created when an ordinary physicist stepped into a dangerous experiment chamber and was disintegrated, but he was reconstituted over a number of weeks. Nixon is still in office, and superheroes were banned in 1977. The US is on the brink of nuclear war with the Soviet Union, and the only thing preventing them from going ahead is the presence of Dr. Manhattan.
The murder of a retired superhero by the name of the Comedian, Edward Blake, and its subsequent investigation by the masked, disturbed vigilante Rorschach, a.k.a. Walter Kovacs, sets off a winding, complex and thrilling tale of conspiracy, deception, murder, and megalomania. A washed up, retired superhero by the name of Daniel Dreiberg, a.k.a. the second Nite Owl, reunites with an old friend, Laurie Juspecyk, a. k. a. the second Silk Spectre, both in friendship and romance, although they must accomplish several goals together during the movie. The fifth member of the Watchmen is Adrian Veidt, a.k.a. Ozymandias, who modeled his life after Alexander the Great and is now head of a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate.
The movie keeps to both the spirit and, for the most part, the letter of the graphic novel very well. Although some items are changed, some for the better, some for the worse, the original message of the graphic novel is not altered, and in some ways presented better than the graphic novel. I must warn however, that some parts of the movie are extremely brutal containing much blood and gore, but this is on par with the graphic novel, and is no more shocking today than the graphic novel of 1987, though certainly no less.
All in all, I’d definitely give this a five out of five, and if my scale would allow more than five I would definitely give it.
