Super Frenemies

I had such great hopes for Zack Snyder’s Watchmen, which is opening today – not because I’m such a fan of the cult graphic-novel series by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons and John Higgins on which it is based but because Snyder was the man behind 300, a compelling and stimulating visual treat.

Too bad that Watchmen, the tall tale of fallen superheroes, set against a Doomsday Clock countdown to impending nuclear war, is not as engrossing. I can and will actually say that it’s quite the fidget-in-your-seat bore. It’s not a good thing when your flick, which has been long anticipated (Watchmen, the novel series, was published between 1986 and 1987), leaves anyone thinking it’s just, well…long.

This super-stylized movie is set in an alternate, dystopian 1985 America, a world in which costumed superheroes are part of the fabric of everyday society. An opening-credits sequence lets us know that our titular watchmen are nothing like their predecessors of the 1940s, a bunch that called itself the Minutemen. No, these characters we follow are less noble. They’re grittier and rawer. I’d describe them as disillusioned – but then again no. Some have been unmasked, some have assumed secret, normal identities, and all have been forced off the streets. For better or for worse, they’ve made peace with the fact that they no longer need to dispense their brand of justice – the sort that allows for pillage, rape, and violence.

When we meet them in the 1980s, they’re retired cast-offs, like the Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan, from TV’s Grey’s Anatomy), who sets the plot in motion when he is murdered, or business cutthroats like Ozymandias (Matthew Goode). It’s the Comedian’s suspicious death that galvanizes another washed-up but determined masked vigilante, Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), to uncover a plot to kill and discredit all past and present superheroes.

Smelling the stench of like, a Black List, Rorschach sets out to reconnect with his former crime-fighting legion, which includes Silk Spectre (Malin Akerman), Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson, Haley’s Little Children co-star; he needs to become a bigger deal double-pronto), and the omnipotent Dr. Manhattan (a very blue – and very naked – Billy Crudup). Along the way, he uncovers a wide-ranging and disturbing conspiracy with links to their shared past and catastrophic consequences for the future.

By the time the utilitarian ending of Watchmen plays out, though, all you’ll care about is the exact location of the nearest exit, and you’ll wonder why there were so few action scenes in 163 minutes of would-be blockbuster time. Yes, the action scenes we get are literally bone-crunching and hard to watch, but Snyder gave us better and more of that in his previous effort than he does here. And I don’t think Crudup’s full-frontal nudity exactly counts as exciting – half of us see that daily.

It speaks volumes when the most edge-of-your-seat thing about this superhero movie is the scorching hotness between Akerman and Wilson.

Now, that’s what I call excitement. Here, the rest of it all is what came before and what came after.

My Rating **

Photo: Warner Bros.