Product Description

Carla Gugino, Billy Crudup, Malin Akerman, Patrick Wilson, Jack Earle Haley Directors: Zack Snyder

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1004 in DVD
• Released on: 2009-07-27
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Subtitled in: English, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish
• Number of discs: 2
• Dimensions: .30 pounds
• Running time: 162 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Everybody's favourite graphic novel comes to the screen (after years of rumours and false starts), less a roaring work of adaptation than a respectful and faithful take on a radical original. Watchmen is set in the mid-1980s, a time of increased nuclear tension between the United States and the Soviet Union, as Richard Nixon is enjoying his fifth term as president and the world's superheroes have been forcibly retired. (As you can probably tell, the mix of authentic history and alternate reality is heady.) Things begin with a bang: the mysterious high-rise murder of the Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a masked hero with a checkered past, puts the rest of the retired superhero community on alert. The credits sequence, a series of tableaux that wittily catches us up on crime-fighting backstory, actually turns out to be the high point of the movie. Thereafter we meet the other caped and hooded avengers: the furious Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), the inexplicably naked Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup, amidst much blue-skinned, genital-swinging digital work), Silk Spectre II (Malin Akerman), Nite Owl II (Patrick Wilson), and Ozymandias (Matthew Goode). The corkscrewing storytelling, which worked well in the comic book, gives the movie the strange sense of never quite getting in gear, even as some of the episodes are arresting. Director Zack Snyder (300) doesn't try to approximate the electric impact of the original (written by Alan Moore--who declined to be credited on the movie--and illustrated by Dave Gibbons) but retains careful fidelity to his source material. That doesn't feel right, even with the generally enjoyable roll-out of anecdotes. Even less forgivable is the blah acting, excepting Jeffrey Dean Morgan (lusty) and Patrick Wilson (mellow). Watchmen certainly fills the eyes, although less so the ears: the song choices are regrettable, especially during an embarrassing mid-air coupling between Nite Owl II and Silk Spectre II as they unite their--ah--Roman numerals. In the end it feels as though a huge work of transcription has been successfully completed, which isn't the same as making a full-blooded movie experience. --Robert Horton

DVD Description
A complex, multi-layered mystery adventure, Watchmen is set in an alternate 1985 America in which costumed superheroes are part of the fabric of everyday society, and the "Doomsday Clock"--which charts the USA's tension with the Soviet Union--moves closer to midnight. When one of his former colleagues is murdered, the washed-up but no less determined masked vigilante Rorschach sets out to uncover a plot to kill and discredit all past and present superheroes. As he reconnects with his former crime-fighting legion--a ragtag group of retired superheroes, only one of whom has true powers--Rorschach glimpses a wide-ranging and disturbing conspiracy with links to their shared past.

This limited edition 2 disc version comes complete with a 'portable' version of the feature film, which you will be able to easily transfer onto your computer, iPod, iPhone or any other compatable player (minimum 1gb of memory is required) so you can watch the Watchmen wherever you are. As this is a limited edition, once it's gone, it's gone.

Synopsis
300's Zack Snyder brings Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' critically acclaimed comic book WATCHMEN to the big screen, courtesy of DC Comics and Warner Bros. Pictures. Set in an alternate universe circa 1985, the film's world is a highly unstable one where a nuclear war is imminent between America and Russia. Superheroes have long been made to hang up their tights thanks to the government-sponsored Keene Act, but that all changes with the death of The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a robust ex-hero commando whose mysterious freefall out a window piques the interest of one of the country's last remaining vigilantes, Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley). His investigation leads him to caution many of his other former costumed colleagues, including Dr. Manhattan, Night Owl (Patrick Wilson), Ozymandias (Matthew Goode), Sally Jupiter (Carla Gugino), and her daughter, The Silk Spectre (Malin Akerman). Heralded for bringing the world of superheroes into the literary world, WATCHMEN gave the super-powered mythos a real-life grounding that had been missing in mainstream comics to that point. The film adaptation had languished in one form of development hell or another for years after the book's release, with various directors on and off the project, including Terry Gilliam, David Hayter, and Darren Aronofsky, as well as Paul Greengrass, whose eventual dismissal stemmed from budget conflicts with the studio.