Excellent Movie from Dated Material

Rating: 9/10 (31 March 2009)

Many people say that the Watchmen movie had a hard job to live up to its source material, the original graphic novel. But although it's an excellent asset in terms of its characters and philosophical underpinnings, the novel is a liability because it forces the director to create a revisionist historical science fiction movie. I mean, how do you recreate the tension of nuclear holocaust and transmit it to a public that is too young to remember it? How can you remember that it's in the 1980's when you see a flying owl-mobile? (Notice that I haven't read the novel)
When you forget the scenery because you're too busy watching the fight scenes and the 80's background starts to sound like a oldies radio station, you begin to pay attention to the sum of its parts instead of the whole.
Fortunately, Watchmen has great parts that shouldn't leave you disappointed. For example, the relatively-unknown three-name actors who play Rorschach and The Comedian. Their excellent work allows you to contemplate a couple of fully-drawn characters that are more psychopaths than superheroes. If you extract the Rorschach story from the movie, you could have a film that stands on its own.
Dr Manhattan, besides distracting you by being blue, CGI and naked, still has enough lines to make you imagine what it would be like to be a omnipotent entity that gets sick and tired of mingling with humans.
The fight scenes are very 300-like but since most of us forgot 300 and were embarrassed to rent it again, the speed slow-down and acceleration effect is a guilty joy to watch.
In essence, if you haven't read the novel and don't have any expectations for this movie "changing your life" or anything like it, you're certainly enjoy it for the visual treat and the sheer effort of each one of the people involved, specially the director and his actors.