Movie Review: Watchmen

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Watchmen (2009)–***

I know I’ve been hard on the Watchmen movie, but when I’m wrong, I say I’m wrong. And I was wrong. Zack Snyder’s adaptation of the groundbreaking graphic novel is as good a Watchmen movie as we are ever likely to see. That praise may seem dispassionate, but Snyder’s surface level direction and his commitment to a mostly faithful adaptation makes such an unemotional response easy. While the film isn’t very ambitious, playing it safe makes Watchmen good, even great at times.

The film follows the former members of a masked heroes group known as the Watchmen. Nixon is seeking his fifth term as president and the Keene Act has outlawed costumed vigilantism. The former heroes have had to adjust to either retirement from crime fighting or a life way outside the law. When Eddie Blake (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a.k.a The Comedian, is murdered by being tossed out of his penthouse apartment, the one sociopathic masked hero still working, Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), investigates under the assumption that someone is knocking off “masks.”

The conspiracy, however, goes much deeper, as Rorschach realizes while contacting the former members of the group. There’s Night Owl (Patrick Wilson) who spends Friday nights drinking beers with the original Night Owl. Then there’s Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), a physicist turned god-like energy being, and his still human mate, the second-generation Silk Spectre (Malin Akerman). Nightowl takes it upon himself to warn billionaire CEO and smartest man in the world Adrian Veidt (Matthew Goode) who is working with Dr. Manhattan to provide free energy to the world. The Comedian’s death forces all of the heroes to reflect on their days as vigilantes, while the deepening conspiracy plot gives them an excuse to once again don their masks.

For moviegoers who’ve spent the last few years watching Batman brood or Superman pine, watching superheroes with flaws will appear to be as cliché as a training montage in a sports movie. But when Night Owl can’t get an erection until he puts on his super suit and performs a miraculous rescue, you know there’s some serious psychological damage that these superheroes must contend with.

Still, there’s an ambivalence surrounding Snyder’s approach to illustrating these flaws on screen. The film has a set of actors more than capable of giving these characters some teeth, but the film never really digs under their skins. Allowing these characters to be as fully formed as they are is a great feat for a director like Snyder. Part of me wanted him to go deeper, like he was missing an opportunity, but I had an even stronger desire to take the characters for what they were.

For all this talk of character, I still feel like Snyder may have succeeded exactly where he failed with 300. Watchmen is the closest thing I’ve seen to a film that feels like a comic book without also feeling like an uninspired, shot-for-shot adaptation. The source material did a lot of the work for the filmmakers, giving them no choice but to meditate of the perils of human nature and the great dilemmas of mankind. Even if the pacing isn’t perfect, the rest of the film—the amazing sound, it’s choices for music, and the detailed period costuming—feels just right. Well, just right enough.

Watchmen, starring Patrick Wilson, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Jackie Earle Haley, Billy Crudup, Malin Akerman, and Matthew Goode, directed by Zack Snyder, is in theaters now.