DVD Review: Watchmen review
Another superhero movie! Watchmen cannot be glorified as one of the most original concepts or as being a completely unique movie. Superhero movies have been tried and tested and done to their death. But Watchmen is not completely unoriginal since it does have a divulging concept from most regular superhero movies. And some of the most evident differences are in its style and story.
When The Comedian, a former superhero who was once a part of a fraternity of superheroes known as Watchmen, is killed, his old friend and team member, Rorschach, starts investigating his death. As Rorschach continues on his quest to unravel the mystery of who is trying to kill the former superheroes and their reason behind doing so, he encounters his past colleagues and tries to entice them to return to the world of crime fighting to discover the murderer of their late friend Eddie Blake aka The Comedian. As the story unfolds the lives of the remaining Watchmen are brought to light as well as the events which transpired from the previous unsuccessful fraternity of the Watchmen of which The Comedian was the lone superhero of sound mind and body, capable of joining the young superheroes to take on the criminals of the world. Rorschach, who happens to be the lone superhero not to have revealed his secret identity and continue to live a life behind the mask, endured various hardships which are brought out as he is monitored by a psychologist when he is captured and thrown into prison on false charges of murdering a man. As the story progresses so do the lives of the superheroes and some dark secrets are unveiled.
The character Rorschach is one of the central figures in the movie and is a very unusual character. His mysterious air is maintained throughout the movie with the help of his mask which he constantly wears and is only broken to reveal the dark mysteries of his past which explain his unforgiving nature towards criminals. Also, the constant retelling of stories from the lives of both the first Watchmen team and their younger protégé are other features which stand out in the film.
The makers of Watchmen seem to have gone out of their way to leave no stone unturned. In order to prove or at the least discard any scientific quells they hired a physics professor whose job description was specifically to find scientific glitches within the story and concepts of the movie and to either correct them or find methods to prove their probability. The DVD of the movie contains an extra feature of approximately a quarter of an hour where in the professor explains his entire thesis while working on the Watchmen project.
Seemingly Watchmen is just another movie on superheroes and exposing their vulnerability, but in essence it can be much more than that which becomes evident as the story progresses. With strong references to the political situation in the year 1985, the year in which the movie is set, interesting occurrences and ideas arise as the story unfolds.
