Watchmen: no spoilers, but warning

First, a bit the history. Watchmen is a strange comic. It's more a character study than a narrative. Though the characters are "masked heroes," it really doesn't have a lot of good super hero action. It's a combination of some seriously angsty existential ruminance and a lot of homage to a comic vigilante genre of ages past. Any pretense to plot is incidental and, to be perfectly honest, the ending is exceptionally absurd.

Forward to the movie.

The movie is very true to the comic. The ending is marginally different; slightly less absurd, but only slightly. The casting is wonderful. The look and mood is spot on; sort of. While the sound track is amusing, it's applied with the subtlety of a fire alarm. "Watchtower" is laughable. There is an needlessly graphic sex scene played against the shameless background of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah". Then again, it might have helped...

Violence. There is a lot of good violence in the comic and no drop of blood was missed in the on screen translation. In anything, the graphic violence is as graphic as possible. e.g. if a bone can be broken, it must be a compound green stick with arterial spray. Subtlety is not a strength, as in most cases implied damage would have been enough, or even better because it would be less of a distraction.

This kind of thing succeeds based on choice of editing the source material. I didn't generally like the choices. I honestly don't know if anyone unfamiliar the comic would be happy or even have a clue as to what they're on about.

To end on a happy note. If you are into the comic and don't mind some horror movie style gore, awkward sex, and a lot of blue CGI penises, this is kind of fun. There are a lot of visual cookies. I don't really know if I could recommend it to anyone other that a comic geek, though.