Watchmen (2009)

Probably one of my personal favorite movie of 2009 and my favorite superhero movie of all time was the movie Watchmen. Zack Snyder, the director behind the visionary movie 300, recreates New York City in 1985 where superheroes are banned by the U.S. law passed by senate. Rorschach, a lone vigilante, investigates the death of a member of the Watchmen, the Comedian (played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan). He warns his other teammates about a masked-killer theory which then leads to a full investigation of the murder of the Comedian. Then this investigation leads Rorschach and the others to come across a plan to eliminate nuclear warfare by killing millions of people. Now, the critics had many mixed reviews on this movie but as a fan of the source material and a fan of superhero movies, I deeply enjoyed this movie. This movie gave actor Jackie Earle Haley a break for playing the vigilante Rorschach who is primarily the main character of the story. Now every time I see his face, I can't help but to think about the amazing role he played in this movie. Patrick Wilson played the troubled superhero Daniel Dreiberg (a.k.a. Nite Owl II) who I enjoyed because of his insecurity and awkwardness that was portrayed in the original graphic novel. Billy Crudup played the only being in the story with powers who acts as a nuclear deterrent: Dr. Manhattan. After a psychics accident, scientist Jon Osterman became Dr. Manhattan which is one of my favorite characters in the story because of his complicated personality and nature. Jeffery Dean Morgan played the cynical, sadistic badass superhero will no rules named Edward Blake (a.k.a. The Comedian). I think there is no other actor that could play this role as well as he did. Not only does he look very much like the character in the graphic novel, but he portrayed the complex but yet disgusting character of the Comedian perfectly. The beautiful Malin Akerman played Laurie Jupiter (a.k.a Silk Spectre II) who is the love interest of both Dr. Manhattan and Nite Owl II. Despite her gorgeous appearance, she doesn't deliver Silk Spectre character that I knew from the original graphic novel. Matthew Goode played the role of the world's smartest man: Ozymandias. Although most of the critics didn't praise his performance, I thought he did a decent job playing the character of Ozymandias. But not only the Watchmen, but the other minor characters in the plot both deliver their roles very well and look very much like the characters that were drawn by Dave Gibbons in the graphic novel. Speaking of the graphic novel, most of the scenes and lines in the film were directly drawn from the graphic novel and were translated into moving images and sound. The special effects in this movie were actually some of the best I've seen in the year 2009 along with Star Trek and Avatar. The full complexity of the storyline in the Watchmen graphic novel was slightly lost to fit in a less than 3 hour movie (the director's cut is a little over 3 hours) but it still contained most of the story's complexity to make the movie watchable and very enjoyable. The action sequences in the movie are not long but are very elaborate and are beautifully executed. In all, I give the movie a 85 as a movie and as a fan of the original source material. I know many people will disagree on that but I truly enjoyed the movie and I'm glad it stayed faithful to the graphic novel.