Zack Snyder has a problem; he has too much love for his source material. As he proved with 300, he’s the fanboy’s director, someone who will try as faithfully as possible to recreate shot for shot the graphic novels he is filming. This, as it turns out, is the problem with his latest effort Watchmen, based on Alan Moore’s iconic graphic novel. As Snyder has tried to absorb the leviathan into his film, not without some success, and has created a massive geekgasm of a movie, one upon which much hope was placed, but that could not possibly ever succeed in its mission.
It’s an alternate 1985. Nixon has just been elected to a third term in the White House, nuclear war is pretty much a certainty and America triumphed in Vietnam, mainly thanks to the help of the godlike Dr. Manhattan and amoral nutball the Comedian. Crime prevention was the province of a group of masked superheroes, the aforementioned two, Silk Spectre, Nite Owl, super-brain Ozymandias and sociopath Rorschach. They, however, have now been outlawed and the Comedian has been murdered. Thus begins the movie, with Rorschach pursuing the murderers and the others trying to build some kind of life.
I should come clean now, at the start of this review, with a confession to one of my most heinous crimes against the movies. Sure it’s not as bad as never having seen any of the Godfather movies, or Apocalypse Now, or not liking Citizen Kane, but it’s fairly criminal. Slumdog Millionaire is the first Danny Boyle movie I have seen. I was too young for Trainspotting but have never caught up, 28 Days Later wasn’t my thing and Sunshine passed me by. On the evidence of Slumdog, I’ve been missing out and, if they are all as good as this, missing out big time.
Edit: I realise this film has already been reviewed at willsfreeswim but it only came out in the UK last week, so there.
Let me get some things out of the way before we begin. This film is not my sort of thing at all ( I didn’t even like the similar Moulin Rouge, which was well-directed and performed), I watched it out of interest as it is now the highest grossing film of the year in the UK (?) and my girlfriend was watching it, also out of interest. Also, it was a pleasure to finally review a film that I really didn’t like at all. Finally, the only good ABBA based film is Muriel’s Wedding, and the best crazy singing film is The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
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