WATCHMEN (2009) ¢ ¢ ¢
D: Zack Snyder
Patrick Wilson, Carla Gugino, Jackie Earle Haley,
Billy Crudup, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Matthew Goode
"Watchmen", written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons, is considered by many to be the best graphic novel to date, and anybody who tried to turn it into a film was probably doomed to fail, at least in the eyes of the book's devoted readers. Radically reworking 20th-century history, it tells the story of some masked vigilantes, with names like Nite Owl, the Comedian, Dr. Manhattan and Silk Spectre, through a couple of generations, up to 1985, when Richard Nixon (still the president) is getting ready to launch the nukes in response to the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. It's a big, wide-ranging story, one the book could barely contain, and one that demands to be expanded, not condensed, on the screen. A five-hour movie might accomplish that. At two-and-a-half hours, or even three, something gets lost. Characters are introduced and killed off before you know who they are. A significant subplot - a pirate story read from a newsstand comic book - gets dropped entirely. And whatever Silk Spectre was smoking in the book, she's not smoking it here. At the same time, the movie looks real good, especially the grimy cityscapes and the scenes on Mars. Moore's pessimistic view of human nature remains intact. And most of the leads - Billy Crudup as Dr. Manhattan, Carla Gugino as Silk Spectre, Jeffrey Dean Morgan as the Comedian and Patrick Wilson as Nite Owl - are well-cast. Only Matthew Goode as the Aryan superman Veidt seems a little off. He doesn't look imposing enough to take on three superheroes at once, single-handed. And his megalomania would be more chilling if it was less overt. The most compelling character by far, in the book as well as the film, is Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), a sociopath in a trench coat and fedora, who hates criminals even more than he hates pronouns, and whose terse, hard-boiled journal entries form the backbone of the plot. The others might take time out to consider whether the end justifies the means. Rorschach just starts breaking fingers. The Comedian would do that, too, but the Comedian's a sadist. Rorschach's just methodical. And ruthless. And remorseless. It's not the kind of role they typically give out awards for, but they should. Haley nails it.
