Embraces the Ideals, If Not the Fortitude, of the Novel

Rating: 7/10 (8 August 2011)

After seeing this in the theater, where I thought it was decent but not great, I chose to lower my expectations before my second viewing and found that it fared quite a bit better. Natalie Portman's rotten British accent is still pretty tough to get past, but with that exception the roles were almost perfectly cast and the themes present in Alan Moore's graphic novel are still as appropriate today as they were in the early '80s. Although I spotted a few surprising omissions from the original story, the recent translation of another Moore story, Watchmen, has taught me that many times a direct panel-for-panel recreation isn't the right way to go, either. Good enough, but not nearly what it could - perhaps should - have been.