Pleasantly Surprised

Rating: 8/10 (3 March 2009)

To be completely honest, I'm not much of a comic person. Although I love the idea of a hand done visual representation for a course of events, something about comics makes me feel like I'm missing out on the real experience of a great story. I admit I was apprehensive when I stepped into line to get into the theatre, worried that my expectations of a great graphic novel would be disappointed. When I leaned back in my chair at the theatre and the film began, I was absolutely spellbound. The effects, the costumes, blood, gore, and characters themselves were spot on.
The character I was most intrigued with was Rorschach, right off the bat. I felt that the scenes involving his flashbacks were, though disturbing, extremely inspiring. I felt like I knew everything about him. Effectively the movie slowly worked out each character's past, which was very satisfying at the end.
My one problem with the film was the attention to different characters side stories for certain amounts of time. An intense situation between two characters is suddenly shifted into another situation with two other characters. This scene then goes on for a little while and I completely forget about what was going on with the first two characters. It got a little confusing for me at some points.
I also didn't really understand the relationships between a few characters. It was the slight shift in costume that threw me off for some of them.
Overall, the film really struck a chord with me. I'm not too familiar with the graphic novel myself, and despite my doubts I really was blown away. I was very pleased with the amount of gore; not too over the top, and very convincing. The characters and costumes were fantastic and the story was great. I felt like I knew the story enough from the film alone.