I watched Watchmen last night and I have to say it wasn’t bad. I liked it. I didn’t read the comic book (okay okay, graphic novel) but after seeing it, I think I’ll go find a copy.

What I liked about the movie was that it wasn’t some toned down PG13 bullcrap that the most superhero movies have been recently. There is gore in this movie and its pretty gruesome. It’s not some stupid generic superhero movie where everybody is happy and people dont die. They die alright. And in some extremely nasty ways. Don’t bring kids to see it unless you want them to see arms sawed off, heads chopped open, and bodies exploding. Not to mention the blue penises and superhero on superhero action.

The fight scenes were BADASS. They were 300-style fight scenes. You know, random slowing down of time and one guy owning 100 dudes. But I guess it’s because the two movies are directed by the same director, Jack Snyder. With that said, there weren’t really that many of them, which kinda sucks but whatever.

The story was kind hard to follow but I understood most of it. Maybe I understood it TOO well because I saw most of the twists coming. And the music… I don’t even know what to say. Whoever picked the music for this shat should get SHOT IN THE FACE. TWICE. WITH A ROCKET LAUNCHER. They put the most out of place songs in the most random scenes. I think they played Jimi Hendrix’s cover of All Along The Watchtower right after a sex scene? Or was it Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah? Whichever one it was, it was definitely bad song selection.

The movie is somewhat slow and it all builds up to a lackluster ending. I was really expecting more epicness from the ending but it wasn’t there. And Malin Akerman’s acting was… bad. I bet that girl from Gran Torino could do better. Okay, maybe not but the acting from her was preeettty bad. Bad enough for me to compare it to Gran Torino. On the other hand, Jackie Earle Haley’s acting was awesome. He totally OWNED the role of Rorschach but I kept thinking that he was the child molester from Little Children. Patrick Wilson, another actor from Little Children, also did a good job playing fake batman.

From what I’ve heard and read, Watchmen the comic book (dude, comic book = graphic novel) is a story filled with complicated characters with even more complicated back stories. Such a thing is pretty hard to fit into a 2 hour 42 minute movie (imdb faq says theres another version of the film thats 3 hrs and 30 mins long. WTF!?). I think the Watchmen did a pretty good job here. Sure, it was kind of slow and lacked epicness but I found it to be really entertaining. I really love that it’s a serious super hero movie and I think that’s what did it for me. I’m tired of those crappy cliche super hero movies. We all need some more R-ratedness.

So… watch it.