Watchmen

Who will stay awake to watch the Watchmen? Clocking in at a staggering 2 hours and 43 minutes, Watchmen is about as long as last year's The Dark Knight . What made the time pass for The Dark Knight, however, was the quality of the work produced. Watching Watchmen will remind you of a different picture altogether: 9 1/2 Weeks. It's not all bad. You can definitely see the bones of a good story somewhere in the tangled mess served up by Director Zach Snyder. If you haven't read the book, you'll want to after seeing the movie. Even if it's just to see what the Hell the hype was really all about. And Jackie Earle Haley gives one hell of a performance as Rorschach. But beyond that, Watchman has serious problems. So, where to begin? This is the kind of movie where spoilers are unforgivable, so I'll be circumspect. Early on, we learn that Richard Nixon eliminated term limits, used some interesting tactics and weapons to win the Vietnam War, and is still President in 1985. Ten years earlier, he decreed all masked heroes be banned, putting out of work a whole network of Superfriends known as the Minutemen, and later, the Watchmen. These guys are still kicking around; some life in obscurity, others wrote books about their experiences, while others still use their former identities as platforms for greater projects. Only one guy, Rorschach, remains a masked vigilante. The film itself opens with the death of one of these characters, The Comedian. A mysterious figure breaks into his apartment and tosses him out a window. Who would do this? Is this a robbery gone awry, or a more menacing signal to the other Watchmen? Rorschach figures on the latter, and decides to recruit the others to find the killer. From there, the plot is best left discovered by the viewer. And if they can discover it, they deserve a prize. For a three-hour movie, things feel awfully rushed. The material Snyder tries to get through could take up a mini-series, which, in the end, probably would have been a better vehicle for this story. Instead, the picture groans from the sheer volume of plot lines and characters crammed into it like an overstuffed suitcase. We get a nice set-up to move things forward: Who killed the Comedian? But that early energy is wasted by an hour and a half of back story for each character. These vignettes and flashbacks go on for until just after the two-hour mark, when Snyder remembers that—oh yeah!—he's got about a thousand loose ends he needs to tie off. And he does so at about 85mph. Watching the final 45 minutes is liable to give you whiplash. There's nothig memorable about the final build-up, and the great reveal for the mystery that drove the story forward? It's given less than two minutes of screen time, explained by a character instead of flowing naturally from the script. The acting, as a whole, is forgettable. Malin Ackerman clocks in another wooden performance as Silk Spectre II. She hasn't shown signs of acting life since her stint as Juna in the highly underrated HBO comedy The Comeback. Billy Crudup is a fine actor, but has to portray Dr. Manhattan, a semi-corporeal being that is more in tune with the matter of the universe than he is humanity itself. So, how do you portray a guy with no emotions? Blankly. Crudup does bring some game to the flashbacks, but otherwise does his job by being as inert as possible. The entire story around Manhattan is confused, and his eventual interplanetary sulk, completely with an unexplained and slightly ridiculous watchworks house, is almost comical. Jefferey Dean Morgan is good as The Comedian, and this would have been a more interesting movie with more of him in it. As it is, however, he's given good but very small scenes to work in. It's time for Morgan to be rescued from the ongoing Hell that is his dead/not dead character on Grey's Anatomy. He clearly has the looks and chops for the big screen. Patrick Wilson is forgettable as Night Owl II. He serves as a nice-guy counterpoint to Rorschach and not much else. he does get to fly a bad-ass Owl-ship-thingamabob, so that's something. But, like with most of the rest of the cast, there's little for him to do, and what he does have to do, he does't do very well. Matthew Goode and Carla Gugino fall into that category as well. The real revelation is Haley, who has a recent Oscar nod for Little Children, but is best remembered as cool kid Kelly Leak in The Bad News Bears. Haley infuses Rorschach with a little malice, a big dose of righteousness, and a snarling disposition. The movie was much more watchable any time he was on screen. It's almost as if he and Morgan were the only ones who really picked up on the larger themes of vigilantism, the tyranny of obedience, and fundamentally rotten core of humanity. The film looks great, which is what you'd expect from Snyder, who directed 300, another comic book movie that defied traditional filmmaking. But the spark and energy he brought to 300 are notably absent here. He instead chokes on the sheer size of the story he tries to tell. Critics of 300 often cited the lack of characterization and thinness of the film. Snyder's use of visuals made up the difference in 300, but no amount of gorgeous cinematography and shot framing can save the bad acting and a disjointed screenplay here. Maybe a fanboy can fill in the holes and see a coherent picture, but everyone else should wait to rent Watchmen, or skip it altogether.