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Page 3 of 3 Malin Akerman on the other hand is hopelessly miscast as Laurie Juspeczyk/ Silk Spectre II. She’s likable enough and she’s certainly a pretty girl but Silk Spectre is not a character defined by sexual charisma the way say, Catwoman or Elektra are. In the course of the story she is the girlfriend of and cheats on a god, she is transported to another planet, and she discovers a horrific fact about her familial lineage. It would be a demanding role for anyone and Akerman is never up to the task. Having a real actor in the role would have helped immensely. If the premise of the story is ‘how would real people react if they had super-powers and influenced events in the real world’, Akerman’s lack of depth is a crippling deficiency at the center of the film. On the other hand, watching her strip down to her thigh high super boots and get her freak on in IMAX does have its charm. Patrick Wilson continues to surprise and delight as an actor. He has chiseled leading man features but he’s an actor who’s not afraid to roll up his sleeves and get his hands dirty. Like Akerman, he’s probably miscast if only because he’s too handsome but he does solid work. Dan Dreiberg/Nite Owl II is a fairly bland character. He’s just a guy reaching middle-age wondering where he’s going in his life. You can’t make him dynamic, you have to make him honest. For the past few years Wilson has hovered around stardom and it is because he might have leading man looks but he has character actor sensibilities. That’s a compliment. Likewise, Jeffrey Dean Morgan as The Comedian, and Billy Crudup as the nuclear demi-god, Dr. Manhattan and to a lesser extent Matthew Goode as Ozymandias all create flesh and blood characters. Crudup in particular is an understated but powerful presence in a role difficult to ground in any reality. Which is good because Watchmen needs all the help it can get. It’s reaching, after all, for greatness. And there are times when it feels maddeningly close. As a painter on a silver screen canvas it’s hard to beat Snyder and company. Two heroes kissing with a mushroom cloud exploding behind them, a crystal castle rising out of the desert floor of Mars, a strange owl ship bursting out of the Hudson river or a god striding through the Viet Nam jungles wreaking havoc – to name just a few – all become shockingly beautiful images. The prison riot is a dazzling showpiece. The brutality and gore are often intoxicating. So much of what happens on-screen feels like exactly what it needed to be and perhaps that’s part of the problem.
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Snyder, if anything, (and here I know I blashpheme) seems crippled by faithfulness to the source material. In 300, he found a cinematic way to accomplish what the comic book did and wound up expanding on it. With Watchmen he mimics the comic, sometimes to great effect, but he doesn’t re-discover the story as a movie. On some level, he needs to find his own vocabulary, his own palette to work with and perhaps, even his own message to convey. It’s been a quarter of a century since Watchmen the comic first appeared and immediately changed the world around it. A work as complex thematically as Watchmen will continue to yield insights for years to come but the movie feels unsure of its place in the world. Certainly it has power. But it's nihilism doesn't entirely convince, it feels more an affectation of style than a substantive perspective. Ultimately, Watchmen falls short because it has too much reverence for the original work. It doesn’t define itself as fiercely as it needs to. It's not confident enough in being its own work of art. Regardless, there is something to be said for the beauty, the intelligence, the drive that is captured on film. Watchmen does not fail because it aims too high but because it doesn’t have enough faith in its own medium to achieve its lofty aspirations. Regardless, it is a noble misfire, worth seeing in theatres, undoubtedly a creation of artists at work.
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