[second class citizen]

Who's Watching the Watchmen? We did.

Having read the novel and realizing well beforehand that there was no way a director could possibly capture the entire essense of the book (because there is far too much material to convey within 4 hours let alone the mere 2 hours 43 minutes of the film), I have to say that I was impressed. The story was going to be comprimised from the start, yet even knowing that beforehand, I felt that the movie did more than to merely retell a comic book story I had already read.

First off, there was the casting. With the exception of the casting of the character Adrian Veidt, I felt all other cast members were right on! Most of the actors lent to their comic book characters an even deeper, more human (flawed or not), soulful life.

Then there were the action sequences. How they play out on film is MUCH more powerful and impressive than reading them in a flat 2-dimensional medium.

The voices were pretty much right on, too, for how I heard the characters in my head when I read the novel. Rorshach's in particular was way better than I could have imagined.

There was the music. The director's choice of Philip Glass' piece during Dr. Manhattan's "origins" monologue was absolute perfection! And there was the way in which that particular sequence was shot as well...in flashback snippets... which supported the character's perspective on life.

On the whole, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It seemed that the film took me to a place where I could experience the story in a deeper, more tactile way, through cinematography, sound, spoken dialogue and music. It made the graphic novel much more human and real to me.

I would only wish two things: 1) That there had been a way to have told ALL the material in this format, and 2) That the director's "exit music" had not been so Godawful.

For $13, it's the most entertaining thing I've seen thus far this year!