REVIEW: 'Watchmen' packs sexy punch while holding nothing back

Watchmen" is astonishing. It is an instant classic, a lusty, no-holds-barred, laser-precision adaptation that throws all caution to the wind, embracing both slavish reverence and dark satire with equal dynamism.

The film transcends the superhero genre that gave it life even as it feeds off of it for sustenance. The result is a sophisticated intersection of heady philosophy, shocking violence and gratuitous sex.

"Watchmen" is indubitably the most lavish adaptation of a graphic novel ever made and quite possibly one of the finest book-to-screen endeavors ever produced.

"Watchmen" is set in 1985 but takes place in a dystopic, alternate history in which conservative politics dominate, President Richard Nixon has been elected to an unprecedented fifth term, and the United States is teetering on the brink of war with the Soviet Union.

It used to be that cCostume-clad sSuperheroes were once there to keep the peace, but such vigilantism is now illegal. All the old superheroes have either retired or now work for the government.

When the Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is murdered and industry tycoon Adrian Veidt, aka Ozymandias (Matthew Goode), barely escapes an assassination attempt, Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), who's never abided by the government's cease-and-desist order, decides to investigate. Recruiting some of his old allies - including his old partner the Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson), Silk Spectre II (Malin Akerman), and Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), a scientist who, thanks to a radiation accident, now possesses powers Superman only dreamed of - Rorschach uncovers a diabolical conspiracy in the last place he ever expected.

"Watchmen" subverts the superhero archetype completely. To call the protagonists "heroes" is one of the book/film's primary satirical joke themes. "Watchmen" reveals that those attracted to the superhero lifestyle are the fringe-skirting aberrational misfits of society. Some of these men and women are worse than the criminals they put away. Spray-painted in an dark alleyway is the narrative's prime moral puzzle: "Who watches the Watchmen?" Who decides what is right and what is wrong? Who enforces those decisions? And, most important, who polices the policemen?

Not satisfied with simply deconstructing the human psyche, "Watchmen" also examines what it looks like if a god were to truly live among us. Rather than devote himself to doing good, "Watchmen" contends that a superman would have so little in common with us that he would feel the opposite of empathy - he would look upon this planet as we might look upon an ant colony. Dr. Manhattan has completely lost touch with his humanity and no longer cares what happens to Earth. His heightened state has eradicated his compassion and perhaps even his soul.

When "Watchmen" debuted in 1986, Time magazine heralded the graphic novel as one of the 20th century's greatest pieces of literature. It was also deemed utterly unfilmable. Using superheroes as a framing device within which to write a sweeping philosophical treatise on the inherent wickedness of humankind, the idealistic impossibilities of uncompromising moral rectitude, and the abuses of unchecked power, author Alan Moore created a world as dense as any philosophical text. None of the intellectual heft of the novel is lost in translation.

That director Zach Snyder ("300") refused to dumb down the material for a larger audience will enchant fanboys but may alienate some who just want stylized sex and violence. ("Watchmen" works hard to earn its R-rating. The film is brutally violent, calculatedly misogynistic and kinkily hypersexual.)

Last year, Warner Bros. transformed the superhero genre with "The Dark Knight." They've done it again this year with "Watchmen." Don't be surprised if you feel the need to see the intensely sensorial experience more than once to take it all in. I walked out of the theater dying to go right back in and do it all over again. "Watchmen" is wildly ambitious, a provocative, viscerally spectacular and intoxicatingly stylized superhero epic that astonishingly delivers intellectually. Entertainment and intelligence. Might that be called art? Might that be called art?


WATCHMEN

Cast: Billy Crudup, Patrick Wilson, Jackie Earle Haley, Malin Ackerman
Director: Zack Snyder
Theaters: Hollywood, Tinseltown, Carmike, Cinemark, Chapel Hills
Rated: R (strong graphic violence, sexuality, nudity and language)
Runing time: 2 hours, 43 minutes

GRADE: A