If you've read the book you'll love it...

Rating: 8/10 (7 March 2009)

... Otherwise I don't know if it would work so well. I have read the book and as far as book to movie adaptations I was fairly surprised at how well this movie accomplished it. The problem is that the book was very long for a graphic novel (a great read but there was just more too it than most) so this forced a montage of back story in the beginning of the film that makes sense if you read the book but probably not as much if you haven't.
I thought the cast did an amazing job portraying the characters in general but I give special props for Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup) and Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) for really becoming their characters and giving impressive performances each. I also give them credit because they had possibly the two hardest characters to play in the story. Rorschach is essentially a crafty bad-ass, not like Terminator bad-ass but more subtle, as well as being psychologically damaged from a rough childhood and past experiences fighting crime. He doesn't seem deep at first glance but anyone who read the book would probably agree he's by far the most interesting character. Dr. Manhattan is also incredibly hard to play because he's a person who started out as a human being and was turned into a being who could form/rearrange matter. I thought they did a great job explaining his back-story. Everything from how he became what he is, to how the name was chosen, and even how he used his powers or how others used his powers.
As far as story goes Watchmen has one of the best. It is a great character study and is really a deeply philosophical question of what is right and wrong. The big question raised at the end of the movie as well as the book is whether the end result justifies the extreme means to get there. The best part about the whole story is to this day I still don't know who I think was right and who was wrong because both sides of the story have valid arguments. Forgive me for not going deeper into this but I really don't know how to explain it without giving it away so my advise would be to read the book first if at all possible but the movie is certainly worth seeing.