Watchmen

Year: 2009
Director: Zack Snyder
Cast: Jackie Earle Haley, Patrick Wilson, Billy Crudup, Matthew Goode, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Malin Akerman


If you're a movie buff and you hear the title Watchmen, then chances are you would have already heard all the buzz surrounding this film. The time it took to make this film. The writer of the Watchmen graphic novel blasting the idea of adapting his work. The legal disputes between rival studios on who gets to distribute the picture. The list goes on. But after much ado about nothing and everything, Watchmen the film finally makes it to theatres.

The graphic novel upon which this film is based has received huge critical acclaim, and is even on Time Magazine's Top 100 Greatest Novels. It's a superhero comicbook that defies the conventional comicbook so much, calling it a superhero comicbook is mostly inaccurate. It's complex and full of subplots and layers of ideas which pretty much rendered this book unfilmable, until now.

Let's start with the story. Watchmen is set in the year 1985, but the world is very different as we know it. Nixon is still President of the United States, thanks to the fact that the USA won the Vietnam War, and the Cold War has prolonged up the point that the States and the USSR are now on the brink of nuclear war. In this world, costumed heroes saving the day was the norm, until a law called the Keene Act was passed, banning superheroes from carrying out their activities. The government kept a few under their employ while the others either went underground or retired.

The film begins with the brutal murder of Edward Blake @ The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan). His former teammate Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) suspects a conspiracy to wipe out former heroes is afoot. He proceeds to warn another former teammate, Dan Dreiberg @ Nite Owl II (Patrick Wilson). Dreiberg has retired his costume but secretly longs to go back to crimefighting. Soon the warnings go out to their other comrades: Adrian Veidt @ Ozymandias (Matthew Goode), former hero turned billionaire who is also the smartest man in the world; Laurie Jupiter @ Silk Spectre II (Malin Akerman), a young woman resentful of her mother but does her best to emulate her as a superhero; and Dr Manhattan (Billy Crudup), the only hero with real powers. Formerly known as Jon Osterman, he has now become a glowing blue entity thanks to a freak accident, and now he has the omnipotent ability to manipulate matter, create copies of himself, increase his size and teleport.

Rorschach digs deeper and after following up some leads, gets framed for murder and thrown in jail. Then an assassination attempt is made on Veidt's life. Finally, when Dr Manhattan gets some bad publicity in regards to his past, forcing him to run away from Earth, Nite Owl and Silk Spectre put on their costumes again and set out to solve the mystery, starting with breaking Rorschach out of prison.

But that's just the main plot. Watchmen is actually a series of plots and subplots put together, with plenty of background focus on the main players. Director Zack Snyder takes some time to explore these, such as The Comedian's past, how he is remembered personally by each Watchman, his connection to Silk Spectre and his brash, violent attitude towards everyone. There is also a love triangle between Nite Owl, Silk Spectre and Dr Manhattan thrown in. Then there's the origin of Dr Manhattan and Rorschach being explored. Snyder takes all of these elements, throws them into his film and comes up with a long tale that lasts 2 hours 40 minutes.

But the question is, does it work? Oh yes. It does. Snyder knew he had a huge responsibility to be as faithful to the novel as possible, so he made sure his film is as thorough as it should be. Thanks to screenwriters David Hayter (X2) and Alex Tse, Snyder achieves just that. Watchmen isn't just a plot, it's a character piece, and you'll see how each character plays an important part in the film as a whole. Kudos also to Snyder for not setting the film in modern times and changing things to suit mainstream movie expectations. It's set in the 80s, so you'll see 80s type fashion and hairstyles, and even the soundtrack is retro. But the most important move he made to ensure his film worked was to hire relatively unknown actors who can deliver great performances.

Out of the cast, it is Jackie Earle Haley who will be remembered the most. His Rorschach is the unsung hero of the film, driven by his need for justice, though he is a flawed character who is considered paranoid and violent by most people around him. In the end, Haley succeeds in getting the audience's sympathy for his role. Patrick Wilson is also splendid as Nite Owl, the guy who is probably the only one that hasn't lost the true meaning of being a hero and wanting to save the world the right way. Not to be outdone is Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who gives the audience plenty of reasons to hate The Comedian, and yet makes sure that we really don't. It's as if The Comedian represents the worst in humanity, a mirror image of what we would be if left unrestricted. Matthew Goode plays Ozymandias with a cool and intellectual demeanor, and it is more effective at the end of the movie. Billy Crudup is restricted too much by the visual effect, while Malin Akerman isn't effective enough in her role. Carla Gugino lends some able support as Laurie's mother, the original Silk Spectre though.

To be fair, I think Snyder could have tried to condense the story a little bit. It tries to be a lot of things, and I know why it had to be. But this type of storytelling method may alienate the regular moviegoer who have not heard of Watchmen before walking into the theatre. Some critics have already said that this film caters more to the novel's fans, and I can see why.

Watchmen, in the end, is a whodunit, character study and morality tale all rolled into one. It's rich and intricate, yet lengthy and difficult to fathom. Whatever the case, Zack Snyder has made a fan out of me, and for that he should be praised. (4.5/5)