Set in an alternate vision of the year 1985, the murder of an ex-superhero causes a vigilante named Rorshach (Haley) to look into the matter, an investigation that reunites him with his surviving old colleagues — all of them former superheroes themselves — and gradually unveils a conspiracy with links to their shared past and catastrophic consequences for the future.

I was watching a review today on television about Watchmen. One commentator commented that unlike Spiderman and Superman, and other such pedantic superhero series, it would be hard for people who have not read the Watchmen comics or know the stories or the characters, to fully enjoy or follow the film. Well, that may be so for someone who’s not looking for any meat in their film going experience. Unlike Spiderman, Superman and such predictable and yawn inducing comic to film adaptations (with the exception of Singer’s recent Superman remake), Watchmen is very much a film anyone who loves films can watch without any backstory of the characters or the comic series.

Watchmen is a fully realized film with genuine and thoughtful characters, who are so human and so flawed that you’re completely engaged, convinced and invested in the plot. There was something about each character, each Watchman, that was both engaging and repelling and not simply because that was who they were in the comics, but because the actors and actresses themselves truly embodied the dichotomy of human nature, good and evil, or blind and aware, or hopeful and hopeless, and so forth.

In addition, not only were the visual effects, cinematography and directing simply stunning, Watchmen has one of the best opening sequences I have ever seen. The visuals were just beautifully done, smart and I wanted so bad to take pictures for keepsakes. The film begins before the opening credit sequences and continues through the sequence by way of flash backs of the history of the masked superheroes once called Minutemen. We’re taking through history from the 40s through to the present while picture perfect still lives are taken of the Minutemen (and women) in famous (and infamous) scenes in history like the Last Supper and the famous photograph of the sailor kissing a woman in the streets of New York City. This was a thoughtful way of placing the Watchmen as real characters who’ve had pasts that culminate in the present we’re about to watch.

The historical placement of a dystopic world in 1985 where Nixon is president and we are still at war with the USSR, is surprisingly, smartly realized and not at all unbelievable. So many subtleties, and great detail made you feel you were right smack in the middle of a dark 1985 New York that never really existed but damn well could have. Imagine a very unfunny, but just as smartly done Dr. Strangelove meets Mystery Men meets X-Men….if you can.

I read reviews about Watchmen before I saw the film and the common complaint was that the film was long. Really? What does it matter that a film is long if it is good? The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was painfully long but I only ever read how amazing the film was, which it so was not!

Anyway, like watching Tropic Thunder last year, I felt in watching Watchmen that it has raised the bar for films in its genre, really high. I absolutely loved the X-Men films (especially the first two), but I didn’t think I would feel so engrossed in a film about the lack of superhumanity in a world with superheroes. Where X-Men films are somewhat dystopic and slightly blurring the lines between villain and hero, Watchmen is a full fledged dystopia film, no kids gloves, dark, visceral and almost erasing the line between villains and heroes and what we think we know is good and what we fear is evil.

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