Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #328 in DVD
• Released on: 2009-07-27
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Subtitled in: English, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 156 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.

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.

Customer Reviews

'Sometimes I feel like, somebody's watching me, and it ain't no fantasy'
Coming to this film without prior knowledge of The Watchmen series, I found it to be an absorbing and disturbing experience. It's a bold movie that's for sure, super-heroes who are dark, deviant, amoral and who get a kick out of inflicting pain are not Hollywood bread and butter, but Zack Snyder's portrayal of a society that has embraced and then rejected its 'protectors' is a gleeful indictment on America's voracious appetite for screen violence, amongst other things.

Many fans and critics claimed that Watchmen was 'unfilmable' but I thought the director made a decent fist of it; my only (minor) grumble would be that it was over-long. I wouldn't have minded but the extra length wasn't used to further the plot or provide action (it is a superhero film after all, albeit an unconventional one!) but to pad it out. Too much time was spent on Dr Manhattan and his inability to empathise with 'ordinary' humans, while Rorschach's quest to find the killer of his fellow mask, The Comedian, could have been developed further.

Ultimately though this is a strange but somehow satisfying movie experience.

All Along the Watchmen
I thought the film version stood up well to its attempt to be, as much as a film ever can be, faithful to what the director saw as the spirit of the original graphic novel. The whole look of the piece was remarkably true, in large matters like Dr Manhattan's light suit and in lesser ones too. The humble comic like the vampire story generating something much more serious than its origins might suggest. Perhaps the film was too much the whodunit for some? I enjoyed it in the round and was surprised how quickly the evening went.

The Manhattan Project
Much has been made of the supposed difficulty of transposing Alan Moore's graphic novels into the medium of film. Previous attempts such as V for Vendetta and From Hell received mixed receptions from critics and audiences, but were both actually very good pieces of cinema. Moore's public disowning of the film imaginings of his work has harmed them, but it says more about his non-conformism than it does about the quality of the movies themselves.

Watchmen is a beautifully crafted and fascinating story (it is one of the New York Times top 100 novels of all time after all). Atmospherically shot, with gravelly narration by the disturbing and uncompromising Rorschach, the imersion into the alternative 1980s history is immediate.

Cold War paranoia has been racheted up and nuclear armageddon seems imminent and terrifying. In 2009 this has less intrinsic power than when Moore penned Watchmen in 1986. The Soviet giant has crumbled and nuclear proliferation has reduced, but the capability of humanity to destroy itself is still a hard truth of the world we live in. That's what makes the character of Dr Manhattan so engrossing. A man turned into a being of god-like power, his struggle to save humanity causes him to lose his own. The portrayl of Manhattan by Billy Crudupp is wonderful; quiet, regretful and absorbing. This is juxtaposed with visual representations of a towering blue giant, destroying human lives with a gesture. The parallel with the awful responsibility of controlling a nuclear button is clear.

The other characters are as well drawn as they need to be to lend support to the blue gargantuan, Rorschach being the most compelling, but Manhattan is the centrepiece. Given near infinite powers, the question settles in the viewers mind, how would I respond to the the needs of my loved ones? My country? The world?

Moore's story is ascerbic and engaging, the lines between good and evil are blurred. The thoughtful, compassionate Nite Owl partners with the uncompromising and brutal Rorschach. Ozymandias mixes intelligence with maeglomania and explains the true nature of sacrifice. Silk Spectre and the Comedian explore themes of human emotions and responses; the interwining of love and grief, exhaltation and regret. As a whole Watchmen is a rich, well textured story which provokes thought as well as entertaining. Watch it.