“Watchmen” is a thinking person’s comic-book movie, deconstructing the super-hero while balancing fantastic eye candy with complex philosophical musings — many of which don’t reveal themselves until hours or days after you’ve left the theater.
It’s visually and intellectually hot and emotionally cool. Many of my fellow reviewers see this as a near-fatal flaw. I would remind them that precisely the same thing can be said of “Citizen Kane,” which they often cite as the best American movie ever made.
Like Orson Welles, Snyder and screenwriters David Hayter and Alex Tse (and Moore and Gibbons before them, of course) compensate for that coolness with the brilliance of their visuals and storytelling.
Two or three sequences hold up with some of the best ever committed to celluloid, and despite the gnarliness of its narrative — thick with flashbacks and digressions — “Watchmen” makes perfect sense.
But answers come slowly.
It does seem as if some negative reviews are starting come in, mostly from people who seem unhappy that the film isn't as linear or light-hearted as the typical comic book movie and perhaps too faithful to the source.
