Watchmen

[Hal]

Title: Watchmen: Director's Cut: Special Edition
Year: 2009
Director: Zack Snyder
Rating: R
Length: 186 Min.
Video: Widescreen 2.40:1
Audio: English: DTS-HD Master Audio: 5.1, French: Dolby Digital: 5.1
Subtitles: English, French, Spanish

Stars:
Malin Akerman
Billy Crudup
Matthew Goode
Jackie Earle Haley
Jeffrey Dean Morgan

Plot:
A complex, multi-layered mystery adventure, Watchmen is set in an alternate 1985 America in which costumed superheroes are part of the fabric of everyday society, and the “Doomsday Clock” – which charts the USA’s tension with the Soviet Union – is permanently set at five minutes to midnight. When one of his former colleagues is murdered, the washed up but no less determined masked vigilante Rorschach sets out to uncover a plot to kill and discredit all past and present superheroes. As he reconnects with his former crime-fighting legion – a ragtag group of retired superheroes, only one of whom has true powers – Rorschach glimpses a wide-ranging and disturbing conspiracy with links to their shared past and catastrophic consequences for the future. Their mission is to watch over humanity…but who is watching the watchmen?

Extras:
Scene Access
Featurettes
Music Videos
BD-Live
Maximum Movie Mode

My Thoughts:

An interesting film with a stylistic presentation reminiscent of the pinnacle of the “film noir” era.   Other than Superman and some Batman, I’ve never been a big comic strip super action hero fan and this movie did not do much to change my mind.  Running a bit long (3 hours and 6 minutes), I found myself asking when it would get to the point and just how much longer this is going to go on, but I made it through with the help of scenes like those in the prison.  While there were some very nice special effects and CG work, I couldn’t quite figure out why Dr. Manhattan sometimes wore his loin cloth and other times didn’t.  Maybe I am missing some underlying hidden meaning for either presentation.

Glad I got around to watching it, but I suspect it will be some time before I pull it out again.

Rating:

[Achim]

I do own the Extended Director's Cut (just to get the most out of it), which runs almost/more than 4 hours; it also include the The Black Freighter short (is that 1 hour....?), which I would hope can be skipped during repeated viewings (to shorten the feature). I believe it is otherwise not seamless branched to allow for viewing of the Theatrical Cut.

[Hal]

I'm sometimes just a sucker for the cool models! 

[Rick]

I'm sometimes just a sucker for the cool models! 

You and me both. 

[Alien Redrum]

I really wanted to like this movie, but your feelings summed up pretty well why I didn't. It's about 2 weeks long, with very little to keep me interested. It's odd, too, because I like hardboiled, I prefer my heroes without super powers and I like mysteries, but none of it really worked for me in this film.

[goodguy]

After utterly disagreeing with Jon (and pretty much everyone else) about The Dark Knight, I'm happy to agree with him in that Watchmen is a somewhat flawed, but great take on the superhero genre, which may have already grown up in Moore's comic of the '80s, but took a couple of decades more to do so on the big screen.