WATCHMEN

(2009)

directed by Zack Snyder

written by David Hayter & Alex Tse

 

reviewed by Adam Armstrong

3.17.09

 

 

Three hours of full frontal male nudity; it reminds me of the family reunion when they let Uncle Ricky out of the asylum.

 

The Comedian (Jeffery Dean Morgan) is killed. The remaining Watchmen are retired. Rorschach (Jackie Earl Haley) thinks someone is hunting down masked heroes and decides to warn the others. But the others are finding out that people are out to either kill them or shun them. Time is running out between U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A. starting a world ending nuclear war. But something else that is possibly worse is about to happen and they may not be anyone left to stop it.

 

To put it frankly, this sucked. Taking something that has such a huge fan following and has so much depth and attempting to film it probably wasn’t the best idea in the world. Every sentence in the book is great and adapting it to a film; you just lose quite a bit of it. Snyder tried to fill in the blanks with a bunch of ‘fast-forwarded’ stuff that I don’t think would make a whole lot of sense to those who hadn’t read it. There are also quite a few nods to fans of the book that are just lost on those who hadn't read the book. The ending was changed considerably. At its core it is very similar but I didn’t care too much for this ending. There is also enough slow motion fighting to make John Woo roll his eyes.

 

The DVD is supposed to be more like the book but who cares. If you’ve read Watchmen the graphic novel you’ll probably hate this. If you haven’t read it yet you might like it but I doubt it.

 

2.5 out of 5 because of the cool visual effects.