What a brilliant, brilliant review. Anthony Lane:
The bad news about “Watchmen†is that it grinds and squelches on for two and a half hours, like a major operation. The good news is that you don’t have to stay past the opening credit sequence—easily the highlight of the film.
There’s something about a thunderingly negative review that makes it the most exhilarating of reading experiences. It might be as effective as taking a peashooter to a steam engine but the sound of that pea pinging off steel is nonetheless strangely warming. This particularly applies with huge blockbuster films because it helps to remind us that the bigger they are, the more likely it is that they are also absurd.
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Although I haven’t seen Watchmen the bit about being “so insanely aroused by the look of vengeance, and by the stylized application of physical power” rings true from V for Vendetta, which also ended up “twice as fascistic as the forces it wishes to lampoon”. The interrogation of the Natalie Portman character a particularly repulsive (and bizarre) example thereof.
Haven’t seen V for Vendetta – it’s in the “get round to it eventually” pile under the telly – but it’s definitely true of Watchmen.