In the interest of full disclosure: I love the original graphic novel Watchmen on which the film is based. I am certain this colors my opinions, both positive and negative. I tried, for the most part, to set aside my love for the book and judge the film on its own merits, but you should probably still keep my bias in mind while reading this.
Last night I finally made it out to see Watchmen a second time. I didn't write down my thoughts here after my first viewing because I was certain that my opinion would change. I was right. After letting it stew in my head for weeks, I needed to see it again to clarify my thoughts so that I could finally share my Very Important Opinions with you, gentle reader.
I've read all kinds of reviews of Watchmen. It's been a divisive film when it comes to both critical and public opinion. Some have hailed it as a genre picture masterpiece, this generation's Blade Runner, while others have accused it of being dull and overhyped (though I would argue the latter is the studio's fault, not the film's). This movie is anything but mediocre, though--it's weird and clever and funny and playfully satirical and, yes, significantly flawed, but it's not mediocre.
This is a strange film. It's not really a superhero movie except in name; it plays more like a very expensive art-house picture. It's slow-paced, talky and dense, but it's not boring. It demands thought. Much of the film feels very experimental--in structure, in world-building, in pacing, in shot composition--with varying degrees of success. It's not an easy movie to digest, and I think it's considerably improved by a second viewing. It is subtle and manages to avoid the hamfistedness that plagues superhero-movies-trying-desperately-to-be-deep (see: The Dark Knight).
I'll spare you the obligatory plot summary. The story is honestly somewhat secondary anyway; Watchmen is more of a character study of the massively screwed-up retired superheroes who make up the central cast.
All of the characters get a fair amount of screen time, though to me the film sometimes felt very heavy on Dr. Manhattan's storyline. This may be for the best, because to my surprise, Dr. Manhattan (played by Billy Crudup) was one of the most emotionally resonant characters in the film. Crudup brings a kind of pathos to his performance, and his interpretation makes the character heartbreakingly sympathetic.
But everyone in this story is a little sad, a little lost, and for the most part the rest of the cast captures this, too. Patrick Wilson plays Dan Dreiberg (Nite Owl II) so sweet and earnest that it's impossible to not like him. Matthew Goode's Adrian Veidt (Ozymandias) is different from my initial interpretation of the book's character, but I think I might like his better: he hits a perfect mix of ruthlessness, loneliness, arrogance and well-meaning but broken humanity. Jeffrey Dean Morgan plays Eddie Blake (The Comedian), a man who does a considerable number of awful things but is so devastatingly human in a few choice scenes that it's incredibly difficult to hate him.
And then, of course, there's Jackie Earle Haley's Rorschach, who steals the show every time he appears onscreen. Haley truly embodies the character--his take on our favorite never-compromising right-wing sociopath is pitch-perfect, right down to the body language and the gravelly voice. That he spends most of the film with a "sock on his head," as the actor has described it, makes the performance even more impressive. If you pay close attention, you can actually see Haley emoting under the mask, which adds a whole new level to his scenes. His Rorschach is complex: simultaneously an intimidating badass and undeniably broken--a lonely, pathetic monster of a man and a sort of child who never grew up.
The only central cast member whose performance did not satisfy me was Malin Akerman, as Laurie Juspeczyk (Silk Spectre II). I'm torn on her, to be honest--I don't think she was quite as awful as some folks have been saying. I've known women who talked like that, but at the same time, she was one of the few characters who was difficult to feel much of anything for, in part because her character was simplified, but her line delivery didn't help either. She was sort of emotionally gutted for the screen and she seemed to exist only for the sake of the male characters' story arcs. I was disappointed with her.
Akerman's performance wasn't the only flaw. There were problems with the editing, with the script, with the rigid adherence to the visuals of the graphic novel. The latter was the most distracting to me--at times it made the film seem unfortunately distant. I was also a little disappointed with the depiction of the film's violence, which was extreme and graphic compared to many other R-rated films but, at the same time, it was too stylized to be anywhere near as upsetting as it should have been.
Despite the fact that I can point out these problems to you, at this point I don't know what I would actually change about the film. Imperfect as it is, I liked Snyder's Watchmen. I might even love it. It seems extraordinarily fitting that the film adaptation of the greatest graphic novel of all time--a Grand Experiment itself, and not perfect either--would be experimental and strange and flawed.
