WATCHMEN Delivers Dark Justice

Rating: 8/10 (7 March 2009)

WATCHMEN, Director: Zack Snyder, Country: USA, Year: 2009, Language: English, Runtime: 163 Minutes, Rating: 18
What we got here is a Superhero movie that's closer in tone and content to TAXI DRIVER (1976) than it is to Spiderman, Superman or Batman. It's a dark, brooding, complex, multi-layered mystery adventure set in an alternate 1985, one in which Nixon is back for a third term as President and costumed superheroes are part and parcel of everyday life. The cold war rages and threatens to turn hot. The world is ticking dangerously close to nuclear war. Midnight on the 'Doomsday Clock', which charts the tension between the US and the USSR, signifies Armageddon and the clock reads five minutes to midnight.
WATCHMEN is based on the comic book of the same name which was originally published by DC Comics as a 12-comic book series between 1986 and 1987. The 12 parts were subsequently collected into a trade paperback, and quickly became something of a critical smash. It's the only 'graphic novel' to win the prestigious Hugo Award or, indeed, to be named among Time Magazine's '100 Best English Language Novels.'
The original Watchmen, however, is near un-filmable, such is its density. So the director, Zack Snyder, who made the wonderful 300 (2006) deserves a lot of credit for making a movie that's damn near as cracking as the comic. Few directors could get away with making a $130 million R rated comic book movie, without any stars, but that is exactly what Snyder achieves. And the film is all the better for it.
The plot centers on Rorshach's investigation of the murder of one of his former colleagues. Along the way he uncovers a plot to kill and discredit all past and present superheroes. During the course of his investigations, he reconnects with his former crime-fighting pals  a rag-tag group of retired superheroes , only one of whom has true powers, the near-God-like, John Manhattan  and glimpses a wide-ranging and disturbing conspiracy with links to their shared past and catastrophic consequences for the future.
The film is fantastic, Snyder delivers in spades and the little-known actors are a revelation. Particularly Jackie Earle Haley as the washed up but no less determined masked vigilante Rorsharch. His Noir voice-over is reminiscent of Bickle's in TAXI DRIVER, with words dripping from the screen like scratched treacle. "The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout 'Save us!' And I'll whisper 'no'."
Classic!