Watchmen (2009) 6/10
In an alternative timeline, it is 1985. Richard Nixon is in the fifth term of his presidency, the world is at the brink of nuclear war, and masked heroes have been made illegal. Most heroes retired, but Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) has refused, and continues to function as a vigilante. When The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is killed, Rorschach suspects that someone may be going after “masks;” his efforts to contact other retired heroes sets off a chain of events. Directed by Zack Snyder.
Full disclosure: I’ve read the graphic novel Watchmen maybe four times. Maybe five. I can’t review the movie as-is, I can’t un-read the novel I’ve read, or remove the knowledge of it from my brain. I’m not one of those geeked-out people who can’t abide any deviation from the original: Movies are their own medium, and slavish recreations of books in movie form tend to be soulless and flat. Nonetheless, there’s no way to refrain from comparison, and I won’t try.
It’s possible that Zack Snyder wanted to make a unique movie, using the graphic novel as a jumping-off point, sort of Hitchcock to DuMaurier, but that doesn’t explain his absolute visual commitment to the original, down to specific frames, which makes every change seem deliberate and glaring.
The visual styles, despite this commitment, are very different. Snyder is a slick, pretty storyteller with a lot of whiz-bang. Moore’s story and Gibbons’ illustrations are gritty and hyper-realistic. In the book, the costumes look (as costumes will) a little goofy, and that’s part of the point. In the movie they look gorgeous.
The original is a deeply violent and unsettling work. The film ups the ante on all the violence. In a film struggling to fit in a complex story, where a lot had to be cut out, you have to wonder why every fight is so extended, why the camera lingers (as the comic did not) on dripping gore in scene after scene. I think it’s counter-productive, for example, for Rorschach to tell his “origin” story, which is horrifically violent, after so much film violence that (a) Snyder has to make it even more violent, and (b) its impact is reduced after an hour of numbing horror.
