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Film review: Watchmen
The tag-line of the Watchmen movie is taken from the old Latin phrase Quis custodiet ipsos custodes: "Who watches the watchmen?" Judging by the $55.2M it's taken in so far, the better question might be Who isn't watching Watchmen? Nonetheless, critics have been quick to pan the film, and for the most part I can see where they are coming from, but overall Watchmen is well worth watching as far as I'm concerned.
First, the basics: it's based off a comic book--actually, one of the most celebrated comics-turned-graphic-novel ever, which came out in the late '80s. The setting is an alternate-history 1985 in which Richard Nixon is in his 5th term as President, largely on the strength of winning the Vietnam War, thanks to America having the ultimate weapon: a real, live super hero. This is a world, in fact, where super heroes emerged between the '40s and '60s, fighting crime while dressed largely in goofy costumes. Except for one hero, Dr. Manhattan who received almost god-like powers from a scientific accident, none of the heroes actually have super powers. They're just regular folks who dress up and fight crime. Some are batman-like in their use of wonderful toys and secret lairs, others are more basic in what they do.
When the movie starts, however, costumed heroes have long been outlawed, and vigilante justice--briefly accepted as helpful to society--is very much a crime. Some of the old heroes have gone to work for the government, but most have gone quietly into retirement. The plot begins when one of these old heroes, The Comedian, who worked for the government, is mysteriously murdered in the film's opening sequence. Paranoid right-winger and hero-on-the-down-low Rohrschach is convinced that someone is targeting the old costumed heroes and tries to warn other members of the old hero group The Watchmen.
The movie centers around this plot, which comes to involve not only further attempts on heroes, but also nuclear brinksmanship, a nefarious plot, and a relatively surprising and interesting villain. This plot, though, never seems quite central to the film. Instead, it focuses on this collection of characters who used to be in the hero business together. The plot isn't uninteresting--in facts, it's fairly daring in its denouement for a comic-book movie--but it very much takes a secondary role to an exploration of the characters. To some extent, this makes the film slow: it's a 2-hour-and-40-minute film that feels like a 2-hour-and-40-minute film, and I think that's one of the reasons that the film has suffered at the hands of reviewers. Film is meant to hum along at a quick pace, and Watchmen does that only by fits and starts.
I have a hard time caring about that, however, because I thought the exploration of character was done well. In part, this is because of the way the story subverts the ideas of the masked hero. Not only do they not have super powers (most of them), but they also aren't your usual heroes--for that matter, they aren't "normal people," despite what I suggested earlier. The fact is, really normal people wouldn't take on a life like this. Instead, all of these heroes have issues. Serious issues. Some of them channel this for good, some not so much. At least one of these old heroes is, no doubt about it, a psychopath. Most of them get off on violence to a greater or lesser extent. They're human--all-too-human, with the exception of the one hero who's actually super. As a result of his extraordinary powers, he becomes progressively less and less a part of humanity. How, indeed, can someone who manipulates the very atoms of matter with only a thought and a gesture remain just like the rest of us? He's not "person + powers" so much as he's person reshaped by powers.
Besides pace, the film has at least one other big flaw: the action is too super-hero-y. I'm fine with these heroes being prime physical specimens, amazing fighters and all that--I'm sure their training and experience can account for some pretty amazing tihngs--but the action sequences are almost uniformly over-the-top. It's also gory, but I can live with gore--when one of the points is that the heroes don't have super-human powers, why craft action sequences that make them look like they have super-human powers? It's a poor choice, perhaps made out of fears that the film was too slow, but it's a choice that just doesn't work for me.
Still, on the whole I enjoyed Watchmen and would see it again.