The Watchmen

This is going to be brief, but I really wanted to do a quick post on The Watchmen movie, which James and I saw yesterday. It's really, really good. As in, "wow, I was expecting beat-em-up fun, but that was actually really good". 

I won't get into serious detail, but I will say that it impressed me on three counts.

1. The writing was excellent. The narrative structure demands a lot of faith from the viewer - as in they don't give you anymore information than you need, until you need it, but they reward that faith by never dropping the story's various threads. Disparate stories are woven seamlessly and tightly together, nothing lags and scenes of great emotional impact are presented without pulling punches or in any way sanitizing them. This is an adult movie and they allow it to be such. The ending is also magnificent, but that's all I will say about that.... 

2. The acting, with one exception, was really damn good. I especially enjoyed the performances from the guys who played Ozymandius, Nite Owl and Rorschach, and Carla Gugino did a seriously fantastic job as the first Silk Spectre. Honestly, the casting was brilliant - they cast a lot of little known actors who performed with incredible subtlety. There was very little "action movie acting", except for the woman who plays Laurie Jupiter, the second Silk Spectre. She wasn't awful, she was just shallow, which stood out in a movie peopled by actors who were obviously invested very deeply in their work. Her performance was negligible and consequently, the weak link, but like I said, it was the exception. 

3. Visually, it was beautiful. That's pretty much all I'll say about that, but it really was. The scenes on Mars were especially impressive.

So that's my two cents. I really enjoyed it, I'm really glad we spent the money to see it in the theater and I completely recommend it to anyone, as long as they realize what kind of movie this is. It's dark and has some seriously adult themes, and although it wasn't as violent as I had expected it to be, the violence is well-chosen and very effective (some sexual in nature) and meant to have emotional impact. It's a movie to chew on, so I would recommend seeing it when you feel like having a meal....