A pleasant surprise. Not perfect, but still good.

Rating: 8/10 (9 March 2009)

Long story short: I thought this was a pretty good film, and a relatively faithful adaptation of the comic. I'll be the first to admit that the story has been dumbed down a bit, in the sense that quite a lot of the finer points and intricacies from the comic have been omitted (no Black Freighter, for example). I suppose it was either this or let this film bloat into an impossible-to-watch 8-hour behemoth. But the main points, themes and plot have been translated onto the big screen quite faithfully, however. The main characters still ultimately fail to become "true" heroes and the writers resisted the temptation to tweak the story so there'd be more of a "Hollywood-style" happy ending. (Thank god!)
Acting is also pretty good. All characters come off as three-dimensional, believable and as real, flawed human beings. Which was one of the major points of the comic. Even the more outlandish characters, like Rorschach and Dr. Manhattan come across as believable. And yes, I do realize that I'm talking about a naked blue demigod and a misanthropic cynic in a mask here.
The one major thing I disliked was the stylized way fights and action scenes were depicted, and the tweaking of most people's costumes to make them look less ridiculous. After all, the "superheroes" from this comic weren't designed to look cool. This makes me wonder if the director somehow just didn't get that part of the joke. Either that, or he decided to stick in jazzed-up fighting scenes and less stupid costumes to draw in lovers of more regular superhero flicks. Admittedly, said action scenes do look quite impressive; well choreographed and engaging. But as said, they do seem to contradict some of the more essential points of the comic's story; the main characters are,ultimately, (arguably) failures and not butt-kicking heroes.
All in all, a pretty good effort. Don't go watch this film if you're a die-hard Watchmen purist, or if you're expecting a normal superhero film in which the guy in tights saves the day and gets the girl. But if you're familiar with the source material but not too narrow-minded to check out another artists' vision of it, or just a film lover willing to get a bit off the beaten track, then I can wholeheartedly recommend this film to you.