A Simply Amazing Cinematic Achievement

Rating: 10/10 (9 March 2009)

I'm not one to gush, especially over action films, and particularly comic book adaptations. And I should say here before I go on that I was hugely disappointed by Christopher Nolan's THE DARK KNIGHT. But WATCHMEN so far surpassed my expectations that I had to write in and vote for my favorite movie of the decade (it just surpassed MEMENTO).
Casting and performances were almost dead on. Kudos especially to Jeffrey Dean Morgan's star-making turn as the Comedian and Jackie Earle Haley's amazing transformation, both behind his digital mask and without it, into Rorschach. I agree with some other posts and reviews expressing disappointment regarding Matthew Goode as Ozymandias, but he grew on me and by the film's end I had learned to respect, fear and despise Goode's Veidt.
Visually, the film simply brought WATCHMEN's visual style to the screen as if Dave Gibbons' artwork was a working storyboard. I can't imagine a more rigorously faithful replication.
One quibble: some of the on-screen violence was so amped up from the graphic novel that it shocked me, particularly a fight scene in an alley where Dan Dreiberg and Laurie Jupiter literally slaughter a gang of thieves. I expected that kind of viscousness from Rorschach, not from Night Owl and the Silk Spectre.
I could go on and on, but for now I'll just congratulate Zack Snyder and put him at the top of my list to adapt that other majestic opus so often put in the same sentence as WATCHMEN. I'm referring of course to THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS. That's a long shot given the commercial success of Nolan's THE DARK KNIGHT, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed.