Watchmen

I finally got to see Watchmen today, all I can say is "Wow."

(Spoiler-free review)

I'm surprised just how much of the graphic novel made it into the final film. In some ways, the film may have been too faithful, but this was only in one or two of the scenes that dragged on a bit.

For as dark as this story goes (rape, murder and other violent crimes, vigilantes, plots against mankind), a surprising amount of humor made it to the screen. And no, I'm not talking about slap-stick or 'He-Haw', just funny lines and light moments.

This film, as awesome as it is, may suffer from being too cerebral. It's the opposite of X-Men 3, so much so that a lot of the film is devoted to pieces of deepening character interaction or introspection. Despite this being a superhero film, there's not a lot of fight scenes here...though when you finally get some, it's all memorable.

The main plot line does resolve weakly in the end; then again, this is true of the source material as well. It is a long movie (was in the theater for over 3 hours), but again it was very satisfying seeing something intelligent on the silver screen for a change.

In the end, I was satisfied. Not bad for the graphic novel long deemed 'unfilmable'.