March 6, 2009 -- I went to see the midnight early bird special showing of “Watchmen” with a audience packed with high-school to college-aged kids. It was a surreal experience. I came into the movie cold, with no advance knowledge of what Watchmen was all about, except it was based on a comic book, like so many other movies these days (“Iron Man,” “Hellboy” and “The Dark Knight” for instance, and I liked all of those). So if you are looking for a review from a fan who is going to spend half the review comparing the book to the movie, you are reading the wrong review. It just so happens I have a fan review, right here. If you want an objective opinion from a total outsider, read on.

Compared to most superhero movies based on comic books, this one moves pretty slow and it is about three hours long, so it is a long sit, but it is not boring. A lot of that slow-moving stuff is there to provide character backgrounds and to establish a back story. The fanboys probably already know the background, but I need it. The background goes back into the late 1930s, following three generations of superheroes. The older generation, analagous to what is now called by some “The Greatest Generation” who fought World War II. Then you have later generations of super heroes, some of them fight in Vietnam and some come along a generation after that. Some of these are children of other superheroes.

The current batch of superheroes in the movie is loaded with enigmatic characters like “Dr. Manhattan” (played by Billy Crudup of “The Good Shepherd,” but he is unrecognizable after being transformed into the giant blue, nude, well-hung superhero). Dr. Manhattan, a nuclear physicist transformed into a being with godlike powers is becoming more and more detached from his human origins. When the world is threatened with destruction, he goes off to Mars to mope alone. The Comedian (the name “Joker” was already taken) is a Baby Boomer who is equal parts hero and villain. He is one of many here among us who feels that life is but a joke. The words and music of Bob Dylan's “All Along the Watchtower” play a key role in the movie, as they did in the last episode of the third season of “Battlestar Galactica.”

Another enigmatic hero is Rorschach (played by Jackie Earle Haley) a crime-fighter from a dysfunctional family who sees the world in pure black and white terms, like the ink blots that mysteriously shape-shift and crawl around on his white featureless mask. Yet another superhero is the lightning fast and super smart Ozymandias (played by Matthew Goode of “The Lookout”) who, like Dr. Manhattan, seems curiously detached from the rest of humanity. The two most normal heroes are the Silk Spectre II (Malin Ackerman of “The Heartbreak Kid”) and Nite Owl II (Patrick Wilson of “Little Children”) who have some steamy soft porn-type sex scenes in the film. Silk Spectre's crime fighting costume is of the street hooker variety. Silk Spectre's mother (played by Carla Gugino of “The Lookout”) is a lush with a superhero past.

The film does develop most of these characters, which is one reason it goes on so long. The film, however, does have a lot of fat in it that could have been cut. It takes place in an alternate reality populated by people with super powers. It also features alternate history. The year is 1985. Dr. Manhattan years ago helped the U.S. win the Vietnam war. Watergate never happened and somehow the U.S. Constitution is changed to allow Richard Nixon to continue on as president past his second term of office. A mysterious villain with super powers kills The Comedian and Rorschach investigates the crime. He thinks someone may be targeting masked crime fighters. Rorschach goes around to all the superheroes he knows, warning them.

After getting thrown into prison, Rorschach eventually teams up with Nite Owl and Silk Spectre to try to track down The Comedian's killer and the man who set up Rorschach on a phony murder rap. Along the way there is a lot of blood (gore porn), dismemberments, broken bones, stabbings etc. It is very violent, but not too explicit. As far as moral arguments go. The film doesn't have much to say. The main one seems to be that the end justifies the means. More on this in the spoiler segment below which gives away the end of the film. The film has an interesting retro look to it. The design seems to be a rehash of everything from “Batman” to “The Fantastic Four.” Some scenes are visually stunning. Others are not very interesting to look at. The acting is mostly uninspired, except for a few scenes by Patrick Wilson, and by Jackie Earle Haley, who generates a lot of intensity as Rorschach. Fortunately, there are a few scenes without the mask which give Haley a chance to really show his acting chops (he was nominated for a best supporting actor Academy Award for “Little Children”). Wilson is effective as a superhero who is socially awkward. His sexual performance issues with the Silk Spectre provide some of the films funniest moments.

This film is overly pretentious. The story is extremely overwrought. The moral arguments are simplistic. The acting is generally flat. However, it does have very interesting and well-developed characters, some good action scenes and lots of nifty eye candy. The plot has an interesting twist at the end (more about that in the spoiler section below). This movie is very deliberately aimed at teenaged boys (soft porn and gore porn) and it should do very well in the video market as well as at the box office. This film rates a B.

This movie seems to support the argument that the end justifies the means. In the film, Ozymandias sets off bombs in major cities, killing millions of people. He is gambling that this slaughter will unite the world against Dr. Manhattan and it will prevent a nuclear war. He is killing millions of innocent people in order to save billions of others. The problem with this plan is that the attack could inadvertently start World War III, the very thing the attack was supposed to prevent. This would defeat the plan and wipe out most of the human race in the process. That risk makes the plan insane. Ozymandias' goal perhaps can be justified, but there is no way for Ozymandias to foresee the consequences of these actions in advance, unless he has acquired Dr. Manhattan's ability to see the future, and he has intentionally blocked Dr. Manhattan's ability as part of his plan. Absent that kind of certainty, he is making an insanely risky gamble with human civilization and with the fate of many other species. More than likely, his plan would have resulted in the death of billions in the real world. This raises the obvious question: How could a guy as smart as Ozymandias come up with such a dumb plan? Doing the morally wrong thing often does not provide the result hoped for, despite good intentions. Here is an interesting quote related to that: “There is no greater fallacy than the belief that aims and purposes are one thing, while methods and tactics are another” -- Emma Goldman, social activist (1869-1940). One sees this fallacy every week on the TV show “24” when Jack Bauer routinely tortures people. The information obtained by torture is always reliable and it usually saves lives on the show. Thus the end always justifies the means. In real life, torture seldom results in useful intelligence, and sometimes results in disastrously bad intelligence that gets a lot of people killed.

Another problem I had was the murder of Rorschach. It was unnecessary. Rorschach is crazy. Nobody's going to believe what he says. Not only that, but Rorschach is also a wanted felon, further damaging his marginal credibility. Of course there is the counter argument that Dr. Manhattan kills him because he can see the future (assuming the interference is gone) and he knows that people will believe Rorschach after all. But if that is the case, how come Dr. Manhattan doesn't get rid of Rorschach's diary which, if published, could destabilize the entire world. Also, Dr. Manhattan is only supposed to foresee his own future, not everyone else's.

Click here for links to places to buy or rent this movie in video and/or DVD format, or to buy the soundtrack, posters, books, even used videos, games, electronics and lots of other stuff. I suggest you shop at least two of these places before buying anything. Prices seem to vary continuously. For more information on this film, click on this link to The Internet Movie Database. Type in the name of the movie in the search box and press enter. You will be able to find background information on the film, the actors, and links to much more information.

Copyright © 2009 Robert Roten. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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