A - for effort but really...

Rating: 9/10 (9 March 2009)

What did you expect to see? It's just a movie.
There are some major quotes gone. No Kitty Genovese. No Hollis murder. No book stand and comic book kid. No Black Freighter. No minute long Ozy monologue. No homo reference neither (I like the idea of Ozy being a gay bad guy and the baddest prettiest mother on the team.) No real Rorshack/ Doctor Long exchange. No Manhattan tech-no-babble. Oh yeah and no squid. Get over it, I like this ending better, save for Ozy's final scene.
We all need to remember the ground rules.
1.A hero is not a superhero.
This ain't the book. It's that simple. It's damn good but not great. Somehow this work straddled the fence on what it wanted to give us. The film was not enough like the comic yet as faithful to the source material as any work I've ever seen.
Watchmen was a story I hadn't been witness to before a month ago. I had no idea. The fan boy neurotic exam that envelopes every fine step of Zack Snyder's effort has eluded me. I'm a newbie here. What I've seen in the book and in the motion comics (put out by Warners prior to this) was simply... beautiful. There is a complex, layered story. There is a pacing issue. There is a lot of talky talk. There is also clear cut and dried differences between the characters and an ambiguity of various moral, legal, and consequential dilemmas that sit with us long after our trip with the book is over. I read it and felt... dirty.
The film reveals each character in his or her own world, sets their stories in a swift effortless motion and keeps it moving. Almost in a paint by numbers manner but still good nonetheless. It felt like rolling thunder. You could feel the power, the build up and... and then... something stalled, plodded and choked the pace. That's when you realize -
2.A superhero is not a vigilante.
The attention to detail, the subtle character nuances, the voice work, the staging of scenes and arrangement of establishing shots is incredible. The costumes, the props, the production design, the slime and grit and filth on the streets. Like the city was sweating with anxiety all the way through. It's all there.
There are exact panels, full tilt, that are transferred onto film and laid out here. Indeed, this maybe the corrective nature of a story that seems to dip and dive through it's own plot and double back. Hollywood screenplay structure is null and void here. That's okay, there are moments of greatness that stride through the imagery and presentation. This is something special here. No doubt.
The Comedian was spot on, even through the two main (curiously) over-lit scenes of rotten sick indulgence he performed in. I say performed because he KNEW the futility of his will, their work as "superheroes" and everything they stood for.
Most other characterizations were (choose one) lost/ edited/ joined/ switched, ad libbed to screen - but non more so than Rorshach. Walter Kovacs IS NOT Rorschach. Kovacs is Rorschach's disguise, not the other way around. In the book that was the gospel... in the film, not so much. Everything looks swell and engaging but let's face reality here: Nite Owl was a loser, Laurie was a poser, Ozymandias was hanging with village people, arrogant, rich and sick with an accent (yeah, he must be the bad guy) all the while Dr. Manhattan could give a crap less. Oh yeah, and the world is on the brink of nuclear war, so...
3.A vigilante is not a hero.
Really. There's a difference. He's not a cop or a fireman or a doctor. Vigilantes rough people up, enjoy it for the most part and move on. That's what this film does. There are bone splitting, hacking brain, blood splattering moments that gut you like a fist BUT... to some, it may be too much. When you come to the realization that NO ONE could undoubtedly conjure the souls of mystic Moore past to indulge us with the girth and filth and fornication of Watchmen. It's too much like a good bottle of wine bred and strewn like a classic vineyard fine wine, aged twenty three years that has been sipped and savored by millions before. It's just not as good as the original.
But it never claims to be. This is an homage. There's no preliminary excuses or demoralizing analysts or deconstructing anecdote's to moan about. Snyder knows that. We all do. A lot more is done with a lot less in our own imaginations when we take in the book. What a mind screw for a comic book story? Even comparing the odd music cues, running inside jokes and many lost opportunities against the haunting score, stilted animation and scene editing of the motion comics is a task. So enjoy this for what it is - a movie.
Watchmen is supposed to be a character study/ deconstruct of the modern day superhero and it destroys our childish fascination with men and women in tights.
For the most part, Snyder gets it right. The meat of the tale is there. The psychological gray of what they believe and what we see them as filters through every scene. Inevitably some of the mud and filthy disgust is lost in translation but it sure is fun to look for it.
A hero is not a superhero.
A superhero is not a vigilante.
A vigilante is not a hero.