Not being a fan of comic books, nor familiar with ALAN MOORE’S novel upon which WATCHMEN is based, I went into the screening of the film a clean slate.  The movie certainly has been hyped.  With a budget of $130 million, and a bitter rights dispute between FOX and WARNER BROTHERS just recently resolved in WARNERS’ favor, it seems like I’d already seen WATCHMEN. 

The posters are sprayed all about town, on construction sites, bus benches, billboards, not to mention all over the web.  Who is in this film?  Before seeing it last night, I couldn’t tell you-$130 million, and no $25 million dollar man?  No DOWNEY Jr., no JACKMAN, no one recognizable.

So blind as a bat, I watched as the theater filled up, every seat taken. As the lights dimmed, I read in the movie notes the running time: 161 minutes.  This better be good.  I was ready for a fantasy, a fantastical voyage.

Turns out, the movie is a science fiction tale, only told in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s.  NIXON is president, for a 5th term, and the world teeters on the brink of nuclear war.  A band of retired superheroes is summoned to help save the world, and along the way, they need to figure out who is trying to kill them off, ala THE DEAD POOL, a film from the ‘70’s and ‘80’s with a $25 million dollar man(perhaps adjusted for inflation), CLINT EASTWOOD.

But, I digress.

Forget about the story.  Suffice to say, it is circuitous, full of holes, and not really relevant to the fight scenes.  And the fight scenes are what really make WATCHMEN worth seeing, that and the comic book cinematic effect.  It is dreamlike, almost animated, and at the same time nostalgic and futuristic, not unlike the fairytale look of PUSHING DAISIES.  During the opening scene, the audience is slowly brought through the history of the characters, and the country, the world even, with superheroes inhabiting various moments of real life history, all choreographed to a sneering BOB DYLAN dutifully recanting the many verses of “The Times They Are A Changing”.  

 It is just what the doctor ordered, whisking me away from my mediocre reality and immersing me instantly, and thoughtfully into the world of WATCHMEN. (It is a clue to how long this film is, that the opening credits run some 10 or 15 minutes.)

From there, we are thrown into a murder, a long and brutally violent murder, of one of the WATCHMEN, The Comedian, played by a recognizable actor after all.  It’s that guy, you know, the one who dies all the time.  He died on Grey’s Anatomy.  He died on WEEDS.  You know him.

He is old here.  But with the power and stamina of a much younger, super powered, super hero kind of a guy.  He gets his head bashed through a marble counter top, and still pops up for more.  The action is so beautifully choreographed, it’s like it’s in slow motion, though it’s not. 

Finally, the murderer, a mystery within the superhero adventure that is this film, effortlessly lifts the big man and hurls him through a plate glass window, many floors above the bustling city streets.  As he hurtles backwards through the air, the Comedian swims an oddly beautiful backstroke, floating amidst the particles of glass and steel and whatever other debris results from a structural failure of this magnitude, as the whole lot cascades down to the unyielding pavement below.

It is a stunning sequence, and some 15 minutes later, we are watching WATCHMEN with complete abandon.

The fight scenes are all this way.  The villainous murderer is clearly super human, and the “deputized” WATCHMEN are no easy knockouts.  I’ve never seen such amazing fight sequences.  They are drawn out, but not overdone like most films of this genre.  They are ridiculous, yet enthralling.  And make no mistake they are violent, in the extreme.  DARK KNIGHT was pretty brutal.  It still had a “PG” rating.  This film is rated “R” and the rating is deserved.  No sentiment is spared, but all to great effect.

The film does sway between hardcore superhero stuff, fighting terrorists, crime, the Ruskies, and obsolescence, not to mention a serial killer after their own capes and masks, and outright camp, with clever dialog and goofy images.  Not sure if that was intended, but the result was some needed stress relief from the relentless and stunning visual effects.

Ultimately WATCHMEN is too long, and the plot gyrations too many.  DAMAGES (the f/x serial drama), I’m afraid has solidified the industry cool quotient of flashback and fast-forward until the viewer has no idea where or what he is watching, such that the story falls from its own weight.  WATCHMEN suffers this same fate.  It’s hard enough to follow the futuristic fantasy, built within some degree of reality, and follow the throwbacks to the WATCHMEN’S heydays, the ‘40’s and ‘50’s, and stay connected with the parallel developing plotlines-total world destruction and the picking off one by one of the last band of superheroes.

The characters, of course are way cool, or too way cool.  DR. MANHATTAN, a lab accident mutation played by BILLY CRUDUP, is this blue alien with the ability to grow 100 stories tall and fight as a secret weapon, bringing the North Vietnamese to their knees in the Vietnam War.  Yeah.  But he sulks about most of the film with his genitalia and butt cleavage showing.  Get a loincloth MANHATTAN.

NITE OWL, played by PATRICK WILSON, has a cooler suit than BATMAN, and a more likeable character than 3 or 4 of the caped crusaders, save maybe ADAM WEST, but he’s kinda dull.

SILK SPECTRE, played by MALIN AKERMAN doing a dead ringer for CAERMON DIAZ is an awesome ultimate fighter, but clearly is just eye candy for the superheroes, being handed around the WATCHMEN like an old play station.  CATWOMAN she is not.  Intended or otherwise, nearly every time she speaks she gets a laugh.

RORSHACH, with his eerily morphing and reshaping facial mask, is by far the most interesting character, particularly when he is unmasked to reveal he is DANNY BONADUCE’S father, but alas, he is an aging, shell of a superhero.  Not the stuff of legend.

As a group, the WATCHMEN are less engaging, less interesting than THE FANTASTIC FOUR or X-MEN.  Maybe that’s because there is no JESSICA ALBA or HALLE BERRY here? Or more likely, because we’ve seen this movie before, if only a bit better.