Watchmen is undeniably brilliant as a graphic novel adaptation.

Rating: 8/10 (5 November 2012)

Despite all the signs saying it would never in a million years be remade (i.e Gilliam dropping out, Greengrass being refused sufficient financial backing), Watchmen has been made, and it has been made well.
Whilst there were well placed worries that the novel's widespread, complex storytelling and strong political and social messages would be lost in the harsh world of cut editing and running time restrictions, Zack Snyder has managed to hue his film with enough faithfulness and skill to satisfy the fan and uninitiated alike. The action, although being in stylistic slow-mo, is thrilling and nicely executed, the tone is in just the right place between gritty and fantastical and most of the actors, Wilson especially, portray their characters with skill and charisma, two necessities for a story so deep and at times hard to follow.
Patrick Wilson and Jackie Earle Haley impress the most, with Wilson bringing his Nite Owl some much needed charm and soft humour, whilst also becoming the character Moore intended him to be, an impotent Batman mixed with a mid-life crisis Clark Kent. Haley, with possibly the coolest character, imbues Rorschach with a very hard edge, and somehow manages to make Rorschach's horrific actions in the film justifiable. Less successful, however, is Matthew Goode, who botches line readings and Veidt comes across as a dull and, despite the meticulous detail and attention Moore wrote him with, Goode's Veidt is one-note and 2- dimensional. Akerman and Crudup are passable, if hardly noteworthy, as Silk Spectre and Dr Manhatten.
Snyder's determination to use music and slow motion so much within the movie means that some of the scenes, like the strange Owl Ship sex scene, fall flat and come across as crass and empty. However, where the movie scores so highly is in the fantastic visuals, that perfectly captures the fantastical yet very scarily realistic alternate universe these characters live in. In sticking so closely with the graphic novel, and thanks to the superb cast, Watchmen, whilst being a visual stunning and thrilling superhero movie, is also a dark and engrossing character study set in the paranoia and secretive Cold War era, perfectly used here. Though it doesn't quite reach for the perfect adaptation that matches the book, this comes very close.