Watchmen Review: Who's Watching the Watchmen?

On March 6, 2009, DC Comics is releasing their latest film Watchmen in the United States and other selected locations. In this movie, Richard Nixon never resigned as Commander in Chief and is still serving as President in the 1980s. This means the Cold War has not ended and the world is on the brink of nuclear annihilation. The Watchmen are a group of vigilante crime fighters, who in the early part of the twentieth century were touted as heroes. The Watchmen of this generation are retired as the country feels it does not need vigilante justice - that this solution is worse than the crime problem they were fighting. Many of the heroes quietly step out of the limelight, but a few continue their work (sanctioned by the governing body or not). The movie starts with the death of one of the still working Watchmen, the Comedian played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan.

The plot of Watchmen, from there, tries to follow the journal of another hero, Rorschach played by Jackie Earle Haley. I say "try" because it is somewhat hard to follow due to all the jumping around in time, and there were a few loose ends that were never tied up. I'll not reveal them here because I don't want to spoil the movie for die hard fans of the genre.

I have to admit that I have not read the graphic novel that Watchmen is based on. However, the way the movie came across on screen, there was way too much information to be condensed into one movie. The director, Zack Snyder, told CNN, "I knew the movie wasn't going to be able to be four hours long so I did have to make some choices." I honestly think that instead of cutting what he did, the producers should have made Watchmen into a mini-series instead of a movie. I think the necessary cuts to make it a movie also created the loose ends I mentioned before. As it is now, Watchmen has the potential of being a great story, if you can dig through all the excess that makes it so hard to follow. That's why I say it should have been a mini-series. At least as a mini-series, some of the excess could have been explained in a way that changed it from excess to another aspect of the greater story.

Overall, I rate Watchmen with 2 out of 5 stars. I found the movie to be incredibly boring for the first hour and forty-five minutes. Since the movie is two hours and forty-three minutes long, that should tell you something. This is supposed to be an action movie, but there was so much information being projected to the audience, that the action was lost until the end of the film. Warning: Do not take your children to see Watchmen. It is rated R because of language, excessive violence, and a lot of nudity (male and female). If you are squeamish, I highly recommend you not watch Watchmen. I recommend this to die hard Marvel fans and Watchmen fans with the caveat "don't go see it looking for action."

Watchmen, IMDb.com
Mairi Mackay, Filming the Unfilmable: Zack Snyder on Watchmen, CNN.com