Movie review: Watchman

Watchman

For the fanboys, the Watchman movie has been a long time coming, for sci-fi fans, it looks like a spectacular effects driven event. Does it satisfy? Yes, both as a movie and as a faithfull conversion of comic book to screen.

Let's be clear, this will not be everyones' cup of tea, infact, the film has been panned by more people than I am willing to count, but whilst in the cinema, I realised that it was a good movie. The story was hard hitting, the effects good and the long play time didn't affect me. I really enjoyed it and wanted more.

Watchman is directed by Zack Snyder (whose previous movie was 300) and features Malin Akerman, Billy Crudup and Matthew Goode. When an ex-superhero is murdered, vigilante Rorschach begins to investigate the murder which leads to a potentially apocalyptical conclusion.

One thing to note, there is a lot of very understated male nudity in this film, let's just say that one on the characters spends a lot of time swinging in the wind!

In essence, this film is about people fighting crime while wearing capes, but uses this to explore the wider issues of fascism, conspiracies, vigilantism in an alternate 1984 United States where Nixon won and is still in power.

There are problems, but nothing I can get myself worked up about and if you read the Comic Book, you will see how close to it the film is, I suspect the DVD release will have a 'Lord of the Rings' like extended version to really satisfy.

Verdict

I liked it. A faithfull transition, hard hitting and following through with an ending you have to think about. 8.5/10.