Watchmen

Being a fan of a comic or graphic novel always provides an interesting perspective when it's translated into a movie. I really enjoyed Alan Moore's Watchmen and was a little apprehensive when he movie was announced. I finally got a chance to see it yesterday.

The film starts well but despite its length (160 mins or so) it still feels as though the second half was a little rushed. It sticks to the main storyline from the graphic novel pretty closely but drops some of the side elements; however, some pretty graphic violence has been added in a couple of scenes which, in my opinion, wasn't necessary.

Visually the movie is impressive, Zack Snyder has taken the graphic novel's artistic style and updated it a little but kept pretty close to the imagery. The choice of a less well known actors could have been a mistake but actually works pretty well although Malin Akerman (Silk Spectre II) doesn't quite rise to one of the key scenes.

Overall I came away with mixed feelings. If this has been the first movie of this type I would have been blown away by the visuals but following Sin City and 300 it simply can't make the same impact. In some places I thought that by deviating from the original and playing to the strengths of this new medium more could have been accomplished. As it is this doesn't really add anything to the original. A good movie but not quite great.