The Mythology is Translated with Elegant Perfection

Rating: 10/10 (23 July 2009)

Notorious for its 24 year, serpentine path to the big screen, Watchmen has finally, and definitively been realized as the astonishingly complex piece it was originally conceived as. There is elegance in the moral ambiguity of the source material, and it would have been a desecration to forgo this in order to bring yet another cardboard "Comic Book" film to the theaters (e.g. The Fantastic Four, The X-Men, last two Spiderman films, etc.). The Watchmen was never a comic book, but a deconstruction of the superhero mythology. Deconstruction is not just a fancy term for "things are gonna explode", movie patrons. Jerry Bruckheimer's name is not attached to this film. This is brilliance.
With no shortage of thrills the action, like that in "The Dark Knight", has a point. It is reassuring that a director understands the difference between pyrotechnics and plot. The Blu- Ray Director's cut provides extra footage which enhances the story for the uninitiated.
And for the record, Jackie Earle Haley defines the role of conflicted freak as only Heath Ledger had before.