Watchmen (2009)

I really disliked it. It's one of those films, like The Dark Knight, where there's so much stuff going on, all slickly presented, that I come out of thinking to myself that I probably did like it, until I start remembering all the bad stuff about it that adds up to make it actually not that good a film at all. 

They're too afraid to cut things out, and so it's this very dense piece with no structure to hold onto. The graphic novel managed the mix of flashbacks and present events perfectly, but the film isn't able to replicate it. The central whodunnit mystery gets lost, as does the Comedian/Laurie revelation; a lot of stuff could have been cut, eg Rorshach's origin, Nite Owl I.

Conversely, it's also full of those little inexplicable changes that suggest the director/screenwriter doesn't actually understand why certain setpieces are cool - young Rorshach eating the teen's face rather than stubbing the cigarette in his eye, pointlessly putting in the newsvendor and black kid for the nuclear explosion rather than the two cops whom we've actually seen before, Rorshach defeating the second Big Figure thug by smashing his head into the toilet with the electrocution merely an afterthought - that cropped up in Sin City too. Nixon's face is awful, Leonard Cohen over the sex scene makes it super-camp and unfortunately sounds like Rorschach was singing the vocals, the midnight clock metaphor is turned into a bad cardboard prop, there's no sense of nuclear terror, several beats are missed in the Dan/Laurie relationship, Dr Manhattan's schlong is like a third leg. Veidt was miscast and misinterpreted - he felt like a criminal mastermind from the get-go, rather than a cheesy, publicity hungry, savvy sell-out superhero.

Also, the film doesn't feel grimy enough - everything outside has a CG sheen, and everything inside feels like a studio set. It's almost the same aesthetic as Mystery Men.

Rating: Bad