Slick Watchmen Knocks Superheroes Down to Earth

Warner Bros. Entertainment

Review in a Hurry: No movie shorter than five hours could capture the depth of the acclaimed comic miniseries, so Zack Snyder's Watchmen plays sort of like a greatest-hits version. It still brings the superhero-noir murder mystery very much to life, which is more than most fans—or anyone—could have hoped for.

The Bigger Picture: Watchmen brings to the surface all the negative subtextual things you—or your archconservative elders—ever suspected about superheroes.

A person who dons a neon muscle suit to fight crime is most likely a pervert, closet case, fascist or schizophrenic sociopath. And if they have actual powers, forget it—why should they continue to care about frail and petty humans who are so far beneath them?

Not to mention, if superheroes actually existed, history would have taken a different turn, as shown here—and it isn't for the better.

Longtime Watchmen fans will be ecstatic at the re-creations of their favorite scenes that Snyder gets right, from the flashback origins of blue-skinned man-god Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup) to the looks of arousal in the faces of Nite Owl II (Patrick Wilson) and Silk Spectre II (Malin Akerman) after brutally shattering some bones in their skintight fetish outfits.

Newcomers may be thrown by unexplained details—Why does that guy have a constantly morphing face mask? What's the deal with Ozymandias' giant pet lynx?—or frustrated by the disjointed structure. Unless they're Lost fans, in which case they'll be used to the concept of long flashback interludes and time jumps.

But most likely everyone will get a kick out of Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), a sort of Dirty Harry gone rogue, whose Clint Eastwood rasp could have been really silly but stays just this side of camp. Investigating the murder that kicks off the story—and ultimately uncovering a much larger conspiracy that will determine the fate of the world—he serves as the film's moral compass, in a weird way, even when he's splitting open a guy's head with a meat cleaver.

And just for the benefit of the really hard-core—yes, the ending change you've heard about works. Also, Matthew Goode's Ozymandias is not as terrible as he looks in the trailer.

The 180—a Second Opinion: The villain's master plan doesn't hold up when you stop to think about all the ramifications, depending as it does upon split-second judgments by trigger-happy world leaders. And take note: There's more violence, gore, sex and full-frontal (and blue) male nudity than maybe you're used to seeing in a superhero flick.