Watchmen

Who watches the Watchmen? Everyone should.

I was lucky enough a few months ago to see some selected scenes from Zack Snyder's Watchmen adaptation. I was excited going in, and came out even more so - the scenes sparkled with dialogue from the original, and left me looking forward to the full release... which I have now seen.

And cannot wait to do so again.

Repeat viewing is just about the highest praise you can give a film, but the reasons for them can be many and varied. You might want to pick up the detail of the sets and production work, or relive the action, or simply because there are moments of rare truth and beauty or bravura film-making to enjoy over and over. Watchmen has all that and more.

But let's just get the whole adaptation thing out of the way. It's easy to argue that Watchmen is an impossible to film comic, a text that belongs only to one medium. Certainly, its creator, Alan Moore, has not been backwards in coming forward regarding his own views on the project, but as a fan of the original, Snyder and his writers have done a wonderful job. Sure, there's missing material, and changes have been made, but never at the expense of the underlying story, or its characters.

For the uninitiated, Watchmen is more or less the ultimate superhero story. What Alan Moore did in the comic, and what Snyder does the in the film, is answer the question of just what would the world be like if superheroes - or, at the very least, masked vigilantes - were real. How might history be changed when there are men and women who operate outside of the law to achieve their ends?

Essentially... it's not the happiest of places.

When the film opens in an alternate 1985 the Cold War is at its height, the Doomsday Clock is sitting at four minutes to Armageddon, and Richard Nixon, fresh from winning his third term as US president, is in the White House. From there the world of the Masks is opened to us in flashbacks and in conversation; masked vigilantes are now illegal, but the fraternity remains mostly in contact.

Until one of them is brutally killed and tossed from a window - a very high window.

What follows is part action movie, part philosophical musing on the nature of power and the American Dream, and part meditation on the superhero phenomenon itself.

The curious thing is that the comic was originally released as an adjunct to the popular comics of the period, and many characters in the Watchmen draw inspiration from heroes such as the Blue Beetle, Batman, and even Superman. It was released to a comic-buying public that understood the language of not only panels and the limited colouring and inking of the time, but also the language of the genre. In a cinematic sense, we've reached a similar turning point. The Dark Knight won accolades, Spiderman is a household name, and even good old Tony Stark has had a very successful outing.

It's not just comic book nerds who know the ins and outs of heroes these days. Though, whether the movie-going public is engaged enough to appreciate Watchmen on all its levels is another matter.

Still, even on a superficial level the movie excites. The costuming, both of the first generation of masks in their hackneyed costumes and the slick latex and metal of the modern incarnations is superb - and there's a lot of it, too, from Silk Spectre II's lovely (and revealing) outfit, to the Night Owls hi-tech armour and gear. Each action sequence is beautifully choreographed and shot, and the actors commit wholeheartedly to the physicality of their parts.

And speaking of acting, the casting is truly superb, especially Jackie Earle Haley and Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Rorschach and The Comedian. It's these two characters that many casual movie-goers will find most difficult to grok, but neither Snyder nor his cast ever flinch from their portrayal of these less than perfect but oh so human characters.

That's the trick with Watchmen, really; it's tale that presents heroes as little more than normal, fallible people hiding behind secret identities. They do the wrong things for the right reasons, and even when they try to do good it oft goes astray. The film's tale is not an easy one, nor does it end as neatly as many might hope for - but it's all the more important for that.

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