Yes­terday Monica and I went to see “Watchmen”, the movie based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore. I was only mildly sur­prised to see that Moore has “V for Vendetta” as one of his writing credits, as that is also essen­tially a comic book with high aspi­ra­tions. Clearly, “Watchmen” was in the hands of better artists; the resulting movie is far supe­rior to “V” . Not having pre­vi­ously read “Watchmen”, I went into the movie not knowing what to expect. I was pleas­antly sur­prised to see a movie offers a much greater range than a simple super­hero action movie. Simul­ta­ne­ously grounded and fan­tastic, con­taining moments rep­re­senting both the banal and sym­bolic, the “Watchmen” is a com­pli­cated movie and, in all like­li­hood, does jus­tice to the orig­inal novel.

“Watchmen” is what I will describe as “not shy”. It is graphic in every sense of the word, por­traying vio­lence and sex without flinching. It is also graphic in it’s visual rich­ness, influ­enced by the artistry of not only the graphic novel but also the cur­rent genre of fan­tasy movies like “Vendetta”, “The Matrix”, “The Fifth Ele­ment”, and “Sin City”. Though the set­ting of the movie is an alternate-reality 80’s era America, there’s some­thing futur­istic about it. The movie is an exer­cise in con­trasts: the retro vs. high tech; good mixed with evil; real­istic vs. fan­tastic. And in the manner of Clint Eastwood’s mas­ter­piece “Unfor­given”, the most of the movie’s char­ac­ters, both good and bad, are ulti­mately ambiguous, falling either on both sides of the coin our out­side of easy moral clas­si­fi­ca­tions. At the heart of the movie is a the pro­found ques­tion of how anyone can save the world from itself, and the ulti­mate answer is nei­ther expected nor neat. Along the way, the movie explores the unseen con­se­quences of trying to fight evil from the per­spec­tive of a group of super­heroes who have long-passed the zenith of their crime-fighting careers – like middle-aged batmen and women trying to recap­ture the old glory.

Ulti­mately, the movie is not for the faint of heart. It is vio­lent in a way that few ambi­tious movies dare to be. But to those people whose under­standing of the movie will not be dis­tracted by sex and blood, I rec­om­mend it.