I Liked the Squid Better. A Watchmen Film Review

As promised here is my review for the Watchmen movie,

I must say I enjoyed every minute of this movie. I’m trying not to spoil any story as always so the review will be brief.

The visuals are stunning and do , in my opinion a beautiful job of allowing Dave Gibbons’ art to jump off the page. The acting is spot on, from Crudup’s lack of emotion as Manhattan , to Haley’s performance as the insane yet perfectly logical and non compromising hero Rorschach.

The last time that i was in a theather and the audience clapped during the film was when Gordon was unmasked and alive partway through Dark Knight last year.  Again it happened during Watchmen, and this moment deserved the applause. **Spoiler-** One of my favorite lines from the novel was when  Kovacs is locked in prison and after burning one prisoner he shouts to the crowed, that ,  he isn’t locked in there with them, they are locked in there with him.  Haley performed the scene beautifully and amazingly and the audience agreed, he brought that moment to life exactly as we imagined from the novel.

**Spoiler End**

The movie doesn’t compromise the graphic nature of the novel, all the blood and gore and sex is right there waiting for you. I also enjoyed the fact that the movie shows beautiful 1985 New York skyline, World Trade Towers in tact, as a big “F You to Islam”  The soundtrack is also nice, and I enjoyed it.  The movie takes some small liberties with the mechanism to the ending, but the same ending is left intact. At first i was worried thinking that the amazing ending to Watchmen , was being changed but in the end and after some thought, it still works out just as powerfully as did the novel.  The action is great, and the effects are outstanding.The acting from everyone is great, they all get their characters right on. And although id love to talk more about this, I want this to be a review of the film, and not of the book, and it is an expose of neither, i encourage you to read the book and see the movie, and draw your own opinions on the characters.

If i can say one thing, it is that each of the Watchmen characters are heroes. Each in their own way they display heroic qualities, despite how vile some of them are. Moore wrote fantastic and deep characters, it’s a shame we will never see them again, but it is also better that watchmen is a stand alone one time deal.

For a film that took over 20 years to get made, it did a good job, its obvious everyone involved worked hard to make sure it was a faithful telling of Watchmen, much like Jackson’s Lord of the Rings. I hope the film is successful.

I’m sure a few die-hards will find flaws, but that is only because they are looking for anything different. It is impossible to translate a book or graphic novel to film. To expect a film to be perfect is expecting too much. So if you expect the movie to entertain, and get the message of the book across, id say you found it. Its a great film, and so far the best I’ve seen all year. It will mostly likely wind up on my top 10 next year.

Enjoy the movie, and if you already have, I hope you were as pleased as i was with it.