“Well?”

So the Watchmen wasn’t bad but it wasn’t exactly good either;  it’s a good attempty at telling an epic story that ends up getting muddled down by it’s own moving parts.

Walking in, I thought the dense story would work against the movie. Oddly, that’s not the case and while the movie is still dense, it’s compressed enough to get the good points across while still being effective. It’s an impressive feat considering all the ground covered in terms of politics, religion and murder. The opening montage is well done and good example of what some good framing and clean editing can do to tell a story.

The rest of the movie though can get a little self indulgent. Some scenes are used well to move the plot forward and expand on ideas while others just feel a little bit tacked on. The core story is solid and it’s pacing is good enough but there’s just too much other stuff going on at points.
If you’re going into the movie expecting balls to the wall action you maybe sadly a little disappointed. Watchmen has some great, violently gory bits but the movie is focused on the characters (which is well done).

The actors and actresses that give the characters all pretty much do a decent job. Everybody’s talking about Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach and it’s well deserved. The character it well written and Haley plays him with an intelligence that borders insanity. It’s entirely enjoyable to follow him throughout the movie.  Billy Crudup was also great considering most of his acting was done motion capture. His voice brought a humanity to the character that could have easily been lost. Matthew Goode and Patrick Wilson are serviceable in their parts but their low key performances get lost in the action and badassery for the other actors. I like Jeffrey Dean Morgan the best though; his character stole the show for me.  I think if he were in the movie longer, he would have registered as a stronger presence. There’s a bit of Albaism with the casting of Malin Ackerman and Carla Gugino. Their parts felt a little underwritten and almost after thoughts compared to the other characters. Gugino though brings more to the table. Ackerman is okay but she is definately the weakest of all the actors in the movie.

Visually, the movie is beautiful and quite awesome in it’s use of framing, slo-mo and good old camera movement; everything looks epic. The problem is though that somewhere in translation something gets lost and the feeling of wonderment and awe is lost. Had the makers of the movie found a way to cut things down just a little bit more to make a tighter and less sprawling movie, I think that the Watchmen would have been amazing.

I wanted to love Watchmen but as it stands, I like it but can’t recommend it to the casual viewer. This is a movie for the fanboys, the demographic and the brave.  It’s an amazing piece of work that just fails to translate properly with the masses. I personally think that the story would have been better served with twelve one hour hbo style specials but that’s just me.

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