Watchmen

PERHAPS it’s the recession that’s bringing comic book heroes to the silver screen at the moment.
With the credit crunch biting, there’s few of us who don’t feel like we need saving right now and that’s reflected at the cinema.
Based on what is considered to be the best graphic novel ever written, Watchmen – a product of the troubled 80s – brings its own sense of crisis and impending doom.
Described by its author, Alan Moore, as ‘unfilmable’, Watchmen’s arrival on the big screen is unexpected but very welcome.
And who better to make the transition than geeky director Zack Snyder, whose credits include the stylish film transformation of Frank Miller’s ‘300’?

Watchmen tells the story of a redundant super hero team living in an alternative reality in which Nixon never resigned after the Watergate scandal.
The world is on the brink of oblivion due to the escalated nuclear arms race between America and the USSR and masked vigilantes have been outlawed.
But when former ‘hero’ The Comedian is brutally murdered, the group reform to unravel the mystery.
Jutting back and to from the past to the present, Snyder paints a vivid and faithful picture of the graphic novel. At two hours, 40 minutes, perhaps the only problem here is he didn’t know what to leave out.
For many people, Rorschach will be the star of the show. A terrifying sociopath who sees the world’s good and evil in black and white, he is a reflection of the film’s troubled world.
That’s the beauty of the story – Watchmen’s ‘heroes’ are all actually troubled antiheroes.