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WATCHMEN

Directed by Zack Snyder

Written by David Hayter

and Alex Tse

Starring Patrick Wilson, Jackie Earle Hailey and Billy Crudup

Classification: 18A

***

Published in a 12-part series in 1986 and 1987, during a particularly tense period in U.S.-Soviet relations, the Watchmen is widely regarded as the most ambitious comic series, or graphic novel, in the history of the form. The story is set in 1985 in an alternative historical reality, in which Americans won the Vietnam War, and Richard Nixon was elected to five terms of office. The streets are rundown, crime is rampant and nuclear war imminent, symbolized by the ticking hands of the Doomsday Clock. Masked vigilantes, inspired by comic books from the late 1930s on, once roamed the streets but have been officially banned since the seventies. As the story starts, a retired group of former heroes, collectively known as Watchmen, find themselves the targets of a mysterious killer.

Like the writings of William Burroughs or Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, Watchmen falls into the category of what might be called meta-pulp, a multilayered fiction that serves as a parody and commentary on our collective bottom-feeding fantasies. The series was written by English writer Alan Moore, the author of From Hell, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and V for Vendetta, who has distanced himself from the project, declared Watchmen "inherently unfilmable" and goes uncredited here.

But director Zack Snyder (300) and co-writers David Hayter (X-Men) and Alex Tse, have gone to considerable lengths to bring Moore's comic book to life on film as faithfully as possible. The film is edited to correspond to the comic's myriad flashbacks, dreams and parallel plots. Though Watchmen, the movie, doesn't draw you into the book's weird expressionist vortex and hailstorm of ideas, it's not your usual comic-book fare. Snyder's film is a substantial, occasionally audacious immersion into an alternate universe, juxtaposing caustic Dr. Strangelove-like satire and big-budget CGI spectacle.

The central story of Watchmen is a whodunit that begins with the brutal murder of a 67-year-old man, who was tossed from his high-rise apartment window. The victim, who went by the name Comedian, was a member of the disbanded group of costumed heroes known as Watchmen. The crime is investigated by a gravel-voiced Rorschach, whose sackcloth mask is decorated with a shifting inkblot pattern that reflects his grim moods. The pathologically misanthropic Rorschach (a brilliantly grisly turn by Jackie Earle Haley) smells a conspiracy and begins seeking out the rest of the retired heroes to warn them they may be in danger.

They include the bland braniac Ozymandias (Matthew Goode), now a Bill Gates-rich entrepreneur, with a villain's superiority complex. There's Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson), a combination of a girl-shy Clark Kent and a dilettante vigilante like Batman, who can't perform sexually without putting on his hero costume. Silk Spectre (Canadian actress Malin Ackerman) is the Wonder Woman of the group, who has been reluctantly forced to inherit the skimpy costume and role created by her mother (Carla Gugino). Now Silk Spectre's job is to be the consort to Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), a big, blue, barenaked superbeing with an eerily calm voice and a remote relationship with human emotions.

Dr. Manhattan is the only real superhero in the group. After a radiation accident, he became a human hologram capable of transporting himself around the universe, dividing into multiples of himself, and working as a human nuclear bomb. He's typically more comfortable sitting on lifeless Mars in his vast crystal palace than he is dealing with messy humans.

All of the "heroes," in short, are profoundly damaged, and through their story, Moore's narrative asks sophisticated questions about heroism and personal responsibility. There's little doubt that the original Watchmen influenced the now typically ambivalent approach to superheroes, especially in the Spider-Man and recent Batman movies. With Watchmen, you get the same idea but closer to the source.

As a director, Snyder is more boldly competent than visionary, but he demonstrates some flash with the opening historic montage, and panache in his choice of musical selections - from Bob Dylan to Billie Holiday, Nat King Cole, Jimi Hendrix, Tears for Fears and Philip Glass - to accompany the action. The predominance of sixties' musical selections, from a 42-year-old director, is significant. Watchmen may be another comic-book blockbuster but, at its best moments, it's also a refreshingly provocative head trip.