Snyder’s Watchmen All Style and No Substance
Zach Snyder’s attempt to adapt Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore’s (who, as always, has not allowed his name to be attached to the finished product) groundbreaking graphic novel Watchmen is certainly laudable. Few films made in 2009 are going to come close to matching the brutally complicated audacity of this one, the size, scope and vision at the center of it all so magnificent the fact someone thought they could bring it to the screen intact is almost worth the price of admission right there alone.
Nite Owl II (Patrick Wilson), Laurie Jupiter (Malin Ackerman) and Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) are trying to save the world in Warner Bros' Watchmen
Yet there comes a point where being to reverential to the source material can become a problem, and in the case of this superhero saga set in a alternate 1985 where Richard Nixon is still President, the United States won the Vietnam War and the Cold War is about to end in nuclear holocaust that is exactly the case. Snyder’s take on Watchmen is both too much and too little all at the same time, and while a great deal of it is certainly extraordinary the majority is distant, cold and ultimately infuriating.
Not that this was ever going to be an easy task to begin with. While screenwriters David Hayter and Alex Tse go out of their way to streamline things as much as possible, the nonlinear decades spanning storyline can’t help but lose some of its powerful ironic insight in the process. More than that, the characters themselves become cardboard cutouts, one-dimensional square-jawed comic book clichés something none of them ever were deep within the tumultuous turmoil of the source material.
Snyder gussies it all up as best he can, tossing in every one of his bone-crunching bag of tricks honed while making 300 and Dawn of the Dead. Sometimes this is glorious, the opening murder of the nihilistic Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) an extraordinary pre-credits cacophony of emotion and violence that hit all of the right notes beautifully. Most times, however, it is not, a back alley brawl between Nite Owl II (Patrick Wilson) and Laurie Jupiter (Malin Ackerman) against a handful of street thugs more silly than exciting, the busted femurs and spurting jugulars veins unintentionally (and uncomfortably) hilarious.
Yet I am quickly coming to believe, technical tricks or no, this is one man who can shoot a film like just about no one else. Working again with cinematographer Larry Fong and editor William Hoy the trio absolutely outdo themselves here, all of them crafting an eye-popping blend of visual wizardry that’s impossible to turn away from. For all its faults, this is a movie that, even at almost three hours in length, mesmerizes and enthralls, and even when the dramatic momentum ebbs towards nothingness I couldn’t have taken my eyes off it even had I tried.
And, trust me, there were moments I wanted to. Not only does it contain arguably the worst sex scene ever put to film (and here I thought Munich was going to hold that honor until the end of time), certain bits are so uncomfortable in their pointlessness I almost wanted to scream. The Nixon scenes in particular, sequences that don’t appear within the novel in any way whatsoever, are so idiotic I almost couldn’t believe Snyder thought it a good idea to include them, all of them so out of place and so poorly done if not for the stylized makeup and lighting schemes I could almost be convinced they were stolen from a completely different motion picture.
For the uninitiated, the basic idea here is that the world has come to accept that Batman-like vigilante superheroes live amongst them. By and large, all of these crime fighters are either retired or dead, only government sanctioned masked adventurers like the Comedian or nuclear experiment survivor Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup, doing wonders with what is essentially an all-CGI character), the only person with actual superpowers, still functioning one a day-to-day basis.
From there it is a hodge-podge of government conspiracies, pugilistic paranoia and psychotic nihilism threatening to destroy planet, figures like narcissistic CEO and one-time superhero Ozymandias (Matthew Goode, a talented actor whose performance exasperatingly flatlines as things progress) and the murderously bitter Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley, easily the best thing in the entire movie) searching for answers to questions they almost hesitate to ask. It’s also a poignantly satirical parable about the human condition, the ultimate destination as sickening as it is ironically justified.
It’s hard to tell what those unfamiliar with Gibbons and Moore’s book are going to think of all of this. Are they going to accept this alternate United States for what it is? Will they be able to accept a hero who allows a fellow comrade to shoot a woman pregnant with his child to walk away unscathed? Will they be okay with a movie that speaks of genocide as calmly as an ornithologist talking about sitting in the wild looking for new species of birds? I just don’t know.
On the other side of that coin are those rapid Watchmen readers who have been aching for over two decades to see this film get made. By and large, while those that like the film are probably going to love it beyond words, I think the majority is going to come away more or less disappointed. While some scenes crackle with electricity, certain performances hit the mark spot-on and a couple of quiet moments ran my blood ice cold, for all its technical triumphs Snyder and company left a bad taste in my mouth that wouldn’t dissipate. It’s all style over substance, and considering the source material in this case that’s one flaw I’m just not able to forgive.
Film Rating: êê (out of 4)
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