It doesn't take a genius to see the world has problems

Watchmen (Snyder, 2009)

To get right to the point, I thought the film was over-stylized, and the acting was uneven. Zack Snyder is overly obsessed with speed ramping, which works in several instances, but quickly becomes tedious and distracting. Instead of using the technique to add emphasis in particular places, to shift our attention to something, or to heighten intensity, Snyder changes the pace frequently and seemingly without purpose. I seem to be one of the few people who was put off by this as early as the opening scene with The Comedian. Snyder’s insistence on constantly speeding the action up and slowing it down also has the effect of making every action sequence look the same, so that midway through the film they became rather uninteresting, and I simply wanted to get on with the story.

The story does unfold well, and Snyder manages to work in quite a bit from the graphic novel in a way that, I think, would make sense to viewers who hadn’t read it. The opening credit sequence, which quickly brings viewers up to speed on the alternate universe that the characters inhabit, is excellent. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the best moments in the film.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan was so good as The Comedian that I rather wished the graphic novel hadn’t opened with his death. Jackie Earle Haley was outstanding as Rorschach, and he’s probably the reason that I did (mostly) enjoy the film. I was worried about how well Rorschach’s stilted speech patterns would hold up on screen, and Snyder’s faithfulness to the original writing could have been disastrous here; fortunately, Haley brought the writing to life and was utterly convincing in the role. The same cannot be said for Malin Akerman, who was exceedingly awkward in the role of Laurie Jupiter/Silk Spectre II. Unfortunately, quite a bit of the story involves scenes between Laurie and Dan Dreiberg/Nite Owl II (played by Patrick Wilson), and those scenes were awful. They were so bad that they took me entirely out of the story and its diegesis; it was all I could do not to laugh out loud during some of their particularly forced scenes. While Akerman’s later scenes with Dr. Manhattan (played by Billy Crudup) were significantly better, at that point I no longer cared about (or for) Laurie: a complex, if somewhat minor, character from the graphic novel was rendered flat and unremarkable on film.

On the whole, Watchmen had entertaining and striking moments, but there were too many stiff and uninteresting moments in between them. Though the fanboys may have protested, I think the film would have been improved quite a bit had Snyder opted to leave out some of the events from the graphic novel and focus on a select few plotlines.

Rating: 3/5