Watchmen

To start with, I must admit that I know next to nothing about the Watchmen story. In fact all I really do know is that one of them, the one with a penchant for delivering compound fractures with alarming regularity, looks a lot like Batman and acts a lot like Superman.

Far from archetypal good guys, the Watchmen encompasses a murderer, a rapist an alcoholic and the mentally deranged. Justice League this certainly isn’t.

Set in an alternate 1985, the story opens with the death of retired superhero, The Comedian, murdered in his penthouse suite by a mysterious villain hidden in the shadows.

Following this is a quite fantastic montage, depicting the fictional history of America, where wars were won and bad guys foiled by the Watchmen, before inevitable human fear demanded the vigilantes are unmasked and held accountable for their actions. Bob Dylan provides the score with, “The Times, They Are A-Changin’”, a song that fits so seamlessly with the images on screen that they could be a single form of media.

The driving force behind the plot is the brutal, mentally scarred, no nonsense face of trilbies and trench coats, Rorschach and his quest to find The Comedian’s murderer.

Flashbacks are used frequently to provide the characters with back story and substance and this works well to bring the story together in a rounded way but I can’t help but want to spend more time in the 1940’s and 50’s where this action takes place.

Now, well I say now but I really mean 1985, Nixon is still in charge, the doomsday clock is at a quarter to midnight and the world is on the verge of a nuclear holocaust with the Watchmen given no authority to defuse the impending conflict.

Most powerful of all, Dr. Manhattan has the ability to see into his own future, teleport to Mars and turn Vietnam soldiers into dust but cannot muster so much as a pair of Y fronts to cover his manhood.

Genetically altered by a radiation accident some years ago, Dr Manhattan had been America’s ace in the pack against the Russians but his, elevated state of being, alienates him so far from the rest of humanity he is unsure whether or not to leave earth to its own destruction.

While visually stunning and often thought provoking, the film seems overloaded. It is a long weekend spent in an alternate reality too vast and too terrific to be truly appreciated in a single films worth of time.