Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)

With: Jackie Earl Haley, Billy Crudup, Patrick Wilson, Malin Akerman, Matthew Goode, Jeffrey Dean Morgan

Plot: I really can't be bothered with the whole set-up, but it's an alternate 1985 where costumed superheroes existed but have now retreated to normality after a public backlash, when one of their ranks is murdered it sends another one of them into his own investigation.

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Obviously a good, rich story and also a slightly better film than I expected. I haven't read the graphic novel, and don't really agree that this adaptation is too slavishly faithful, as it never seemed over-indulgent in length and plot to me. It is sort of a mess though, veering tonally from goofy hero caper to soul-searching, super-serious satire of mankind. This isn't helped by the cast who are uniformly weak (Haley is alright as Rorschach, but why the constant batman-esque gravelly drawl?) and undermine most of the serious stuff, but Snyder keeps a surprisingly coherent handle on things, despite some cartoonish moments of gore and more overuse of his precious slo-mo. The ending is a bit of a let down after so much portentous build-up, but it's too weird and visually zippy to ever become boring. Points taken off for crashingly obvious and inappropriate soundtrack choices (including the rubbish score) and for the wise character (Dr Manhattan I think) who picks on shoping malls as a banal evil of the world. Why do filmmakers have it in for shopping malls so much?

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