Watchmen (2009), Zach Snyder, B+

So now I’ve seen Watchmen twice and I still stand by my original review of B+.

For those of you too lazy to click over to UGO, here is what I wrote:
*****

Maybe Alan Moore isn’t crazy after all. Maybe a dense, complicated, multi-layered alternate reality, more reliant on backstory than forward momentum, and produced at a very specific time in geo-political history, isn’t readily adaptable to the screen. Maybe Watchmen really is unfilmable. But could there ever be a more valiant and commendable effort than Zack Snyder’s monumental attempt?

On many levels, Watchmen is a masterpiece. Visually striking from its first to last frame, Snyder’s adaptation, in my opinion, even surpasses the source material. There’s not one moment that isn’t art-directed to the nth degree and I already know which scenes I want to jump to and freeze-frame for home video scrutiny. (Ozymandias, you have too many TV screens!) Watchmen also features one of the greatest opening titles sequences, using a series of meticulously crafted still images to show the point of deviation from our reality and its consequences. Indeed, for the first hour of the movie’s two-hour and forty-something minute running time my mouth was agape and my mind was swimming with “I can’t believe this – they really pulled this off!” There is sequence after sequence that just sings. They’ll be queuing this up in film classes for years. Many of these moments are set to well-chosen musical cues and for a few instances – like the Comedian in Vietnam or Dr. Manhattan’s origin story – where I felt I was in the hands of a Scorsese-like master. Then it hit me that the parts of the movie that were really cookin’ were the backstory, the creation of the Watchmen Universe.

It was somewhere in the film’s second hour when I realized that the movie wasn’t going anywhere. So much effort was put into building a beautiful watch, but it wasn’t wound. The problem, perhaps, is that Snyder chose to stay so close to the source material. What is so remarkable about Watchmen is the depth and breadth of the alternate universe and the (dare I use the phrase?) post-modern method of presenting this to the reader. Think of the book excerpts, the newspaper articles, the parallel Tales of the Black Freighter comic. This is the truly compelling meat of Watchmen. The story that is happening “now” has always been a tad perplexing. In its movie form, it treads on the baffling. The sad fact is this: anyone who comes to Watchmen without having read the book will be lost in the swirl of its plot. And while the movie does have a great many exciting scenes, I doubt if the new, expanded audience will be that excited by it.

Leaving aside this desultory aspect, there are other problems. First is Malin Ackerman. I feel strangely guilty bringing this up, as I’ve been ogling her Silk Specter II poster for so long now, but the woman is a horrible actress. She looks fantastic in that costume, but ooof boy. Oftentimes I can overlook a shallow performance, but there is more than one occasion where her vapid delivery flash-freezes the movie into shocking blandness. She has it tough, as the revelation of her biological father is somehow supposed to be dramatically equivalent to the forthcoming nuclear holocaust, but I feel like she just punted the ball. Zack Snyder bears much of this blame, too. I mean, when you think about it, he’s never had to really sell any acting-driven scenes in his prior movies. Dude can do spectacle, but nuanced performances may not be in skill-set. Luckily, the other actors are all pretty great (yes, I am one of the few who liked Matthew Goode) so letting the actors do their thing might just be a technique that works most of the time. But Ackerman’s lifeless performance is laughable. How do you drain all the fun out of a line like, “John!? I thought you were on Mars!” She does it somehow.

Jackie Earle Haley, however, is really effing fantastic as Rorschach and Billy Crudup’s incongruous voice – kinda thin and timorous – works wonderfully in contrast with the mighty Dr. Manhattan.

Dr. Manhattan is another problem. In his book “Making Movies,” Sidney Lumet talks about passing the 86th Street test. He writes that there is no more honest audience than a Saturday Night crowd in New York, and how he was worried if Al Pacino saying “I love you” to his gay lover in Dog Day Afternoon would elicit heckles or not. It didn’t, and that’s how he knew his movie was a success. I’m afraid, frankly, that there is just too much distracting blue schlong action not to cause some backlash among younger, less mature moviegoers. I think it is cool that Snyder had the guts to leave it in, but there is SO MUCH of it that I think it will stigmatize the film a bit and could wind up hurting it. I hope I’m wrong about that.

And I hope I don’t sound like I disliked this movie. There is so much I did like. There are some crazy and intense fight scenes that are much more violent than expected. Rorschach’s mask is awesome. The first scenes on Mars have a cool, dreamy quality. Much of the music, like “99 Luftballoons,” “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” and Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” is great, too (although I’d like a moratorium on All Along the Watchtower.) And the ending, although it lacks the punch needed to really sell it (why skimp on the gore in the most important moment?), is still impressive in that it exists at all.

That might be the best way to sum up Watchmen. It is impressive and a wonder and a treat and a minor miracle it exists at all. It is a testament to Zack Snyder’s will (and the clout a hit like 300 can get ya) that he got this movie made the way he wanted – and as good as a faithful Watchmen adaptation could ever be.

Ratings:
Writing: B
Directing: B
Performances: B
Visual Appeal: A
Overall: B+

Vitals:
Release Date: March 6, 2009
Studio: Warner Brothers
Director: Zack Snyder
Cast: Malin Ackerman, Billy Crudup, Jackie Earle Haley, Matthew Goode, Carla Gugino, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Patrick Wilson
Genre: Action-Adventure
MPAA Rating: R