Watchmen: Director's Cut

A dead-serious funny book that turned superhero mythology on its masked head, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s Watchmen deconstructed superheroes with rigorous psychological realism: Meet the modern caped crusader, one who’s sociopathic, sexually dysfunctional and a fascistic government stooge. Zack Snyder’s claustrophobically faithful adaptation proves that trying to bring such a philosophically dense work to the screen is a losing proposition at best. The plastic-fantastic Pop Art downer he’s produced, however, is as close as we are apt to get.

After a virtuoso introduction to nuke-spooked 1985 (set to Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are a-Changin’”), the movie unwinds: A psycho called Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) tries to figure out who’s killing “masks”; the all-powerful, blue-skinned Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup) gets stuck in a existential funk; retired heroes Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson) and Silk Spectre (Malin Akerman) get it on. Moore’s dialogue is often spoken verbatim, with mixed results, but there’s a serious commitment to psychic debris. The extra 24 minutes give more time to the superboring Akerman.

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