(2009) A horrific secret cannot be exposed, though multimillions be massacred and mutilated to preserve humanity, whose nature is savage. For geeky fans of the sci-fi graphic novel by illustrator David Gibbons and author Alan Moore (which appeared on Time's 2005 "All-TIME 100 Greatest Novels" list), as well as for others (such as myself) not previously acquainted with the story and characters, director Zack Snyder has transposed from the page, with screenwriters David Hayter and Alex Tse, to the screen a faithful, graphically violent rendition in live-action.

In 1940 a Minutemen group of superhero crimefighters joined forces to make the world a better place, but a copycat gang of cunning criminals also donned masks and costumes to hide their identities. In an alternative history (the kiss in a famous photograph of a nurse being embraced by a sailor on the dock at the end of WWII is delivered instead by a woman in black costume to Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'") where in 1985 Richard Nixon has been elected to his third term as president of the United States and the Soviet Union is threatening nuclear war, one the vigilantes who continued working for the federal government after the 1977 Keene Act became law, which outlawed "costumed adventuring," is murdered.

Defenestrated from a high-rise apartment building, the Comedian, aka Edward Blake (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), who wore a yellow happy-face button, had been a cruel, cynical renegade - "What happened to the American dream? It came true. You're looking at it!" - among his fellow Watchmen. He'd raped his colleague, buxom Sally Jupiter (Carla Gugino) in her Silky Spectre outfit, killed a pregnant Vietnamese woman, and been responsible for the police strike that precipitated passage of the Keene Act.

Investigating the death of the former superhero is Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), aka Walter Kovacs, determined to live his life free from compromise ("God doesn't make the world this way. We do") - wearing a private-eye's trench coat, fedora, and white-cloth mask with inky blotches that change configuration - whose journal of October 12th begins: "Dog carcass in alley this morning, tire tread on burst stomach. This city's afraid of me. I've seen its true face. The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood. And when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout 'Save us!'... and I'll whisper 'No.' Now the whole world stands on the brink staring down into bloody hell. All those liberals, and intellectuals, and smooth-talkers; and all of a sudden no one can think of anything to say. Beneath me, this awful city, it screams like an abattoir full of retarded children. And the night reeks of fornication and bad consciences."

The only two men who quit the Watchmen and revealed their identities - the bespectacled (putting me in mind of Clark Kent) Danny Dreiberg (Patrick Wilson), formerly Nite Owl II, and Hollis Mason (Stephen McHattie), the one-time original Nite Owl - get together to reminisce about the good times they shared as superheroes.

The smartest man on Earth, Adrian Veidt (Matthew Goode) is also the wealthiest person on the planet as CEO of Veidt Enterprises; secretly Ozymandias, one of the Watchmen ("What the hell happened to us?"), he's endeavoring to solve the world's energy crisis (the immediate cause of tensions between the US and USSR - "Fear of not having enough") in an effort to avert the catastrophic future.

That future has been foreseen by Dr Manhattan (Billy Crudup), the soft-spoken, glowing blue-skinned American superman, capable of bending matter to his will, occasionally residing on Mars or strolling across the Sun, teleporting himself or others ("Beats flying coach," comments Sally) instantaneously through space, perceiving his own future and past.

In 1959 he was Dr Jon Osterman, a 30-year-old nuclear physicist, who was transformed into a supernatural being during an accident; God-like, devoting his mind to quantum mechanics and parallel universes, he doesn't believe in God - rather the cosmos appears to him as "a clock without a craftsman." In 1971 as a government agent he personally put an end to the Vietnam war, but since then he has become weary of human entanglements, including his most recent love affair with Laurie Juspeczyk (Malin Akerman), aka Silky Spectre II, Sally's daughter.

Having been led to understand that nearly everyone with whom he's had a close relationship, including his former lover Janey Slater, has become a victim of cancer, Dr Manhattan has exiled himself from further contact with humans, other than working with Adrian on his Karnak project, being established in Antarctica. (Current events in our own universe are occasionally touched upon as in a scene where the leaders of the fossil-fuel industry scoff at the idea of providing renewable energy to everyone gratis: "You want free energy? Well, free is just another word for socialist.")

An aged former criminal Rorschach confronts, Moloch (Matt Frewer), aka Edgar Jacobi, relates how the Comedian visited him on a recent night, sobbing: "It's all a joke!" Some of the characters disguise not only their identities but also their motives and loyalties.

Overcoming his aversion of resuming his role as a superhero, Daniel agrees to team up with Laurie - in their costumes they resemble Batman and Superwoman - taking Archie, his Owlship, to rescue Walter (who warned his fellow inmates: "I'm not locked up in here with you. You're locked up in here with me") from prison.

When the trio fly to Antarctica and approach Adrian's fortress, Dan and Laurie initially leave Walter behind - "Two riders were approaching, and the wind began to howl" - the soundtrack plays Jimi Hendrix's version of "All Along the Watchtower": "'There must be some kind of way out of here,' said the joker to the thief, 'There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief' … 'No reason to get excited,' the thief he kindly spoke. 'There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke. But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate. So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.'"

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Copyright © 2010 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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