Film and TV

The Watchmen is a superhero movie with a difference, set in an alternate world where Nixon remained US president and violent crime abounds
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Now Showing: Watchmen (18)

By Kim Francis
March 12, 2009

The subject of much anticipation from fans, Alan Moore’s Watchmen is the latest graphic novel to be given a Hollywood movie makeover.

But, as with any comic book adaptation, the central question is whether it can remain faithful to its source material to keep the fanboys happy while also making it an exciting cinematic experience for the newcomer.

Watchmen achieves both in varying degrees but, as a result, it feels like a movie pulling in two different directions.

The film, set in New York in an alternate 1985 with Richard Nixon still in power, focuses on a group of masked ‘superheroes’ who formerly worked together to rid the streets of violent crime.

A potted history at the beginning of the film shows us newspaper cuttings and ‘newsreel’ footage revealing their exploits.

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The group is since retired and living lonely, undercover lives but when one of their number is apparently assassinated, the mysterious Rorshach (Jackie Earle Haley) begins to investigate, visiting his former colleagues to warn them of his fears that they are all being hunted.

The film delves into the pasts of these characters as it attempts to get to the bottom of what is essentially a murder mystery.

The characters themselves are the most compelling aspect of Watchmen but sadly most of the characters aren’t sketched out in enough detail – by the end of the film you feel somewhat short-changed.

Diverted by its more conventional superhero movie leanings, Watchmen has an unfortunate and unwelcome feel of the simplistic Fantastic Four movie while also attempting to blend in aspects of the superior X-Men and have the feel of the more adult and grisly Sin City.

Consequently, it is a lot less cerebral than it purports and rather than seamlessly mixing together these three examples from the genre, it awkwardly lurches continually from one to another.

The darker of the masked avengers in Watchmen are without doubt the more interesting, with Rorschach, The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and Dr Manhattan (Billy Crudup) possessing back stories that are the most absorbing but sadly, with much of the focus on Malin Akerman’s Silk Spectre II, the film suffers.

Good in The Heartbreak Kid and 27 Dresses, Akerman should perhaps stick to comedy roles because in this she is atrocious and severely damages the film’s credibility.

At heart, what this film wants to be is a big dumb superhero actioner (the director is 300’s Zack Snyder) but it is unavoidably restrained by the pensive source material which offers a rich political and social commentary.

The much-adored cult of Watchmen has been transferred to the big screen with some degree of success but its flaws mean that ultimately both fanboys and superhero movie fans will leave cinemas dissatisfied.

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