Watching 'Watchmen'

I have fond memories of reading Alan Moore's Watchmen while working in a popular London bookshop in the late 1980s. In the quiet periods I would surreptitiously pull this graphic novel from beneath the till and speed read a few pages before being required to serve yet another tourist looking for a London guide or an appropriately British literary classic to take home - this in the days before the Internet... So finally, the film adaptation has emerged after 22 years and a number of false starts. I didn't catch the film at the cinema but I have now seen it, tonight, on DVD. I was lucky enough to watch it at a friend's on a 60 inch screen so it was rather more of a 'cinematic' experience than much of my viewing, which tends to happen these days on my 24 inch iMac. So, 20 odd years after the graphic novel and it was clear that my memory had failed me - much of the early action was unfamiliar; perhaps I should have re-read Moore's novel first... The film certainly begins slowly and it has to work hard to set up the characters, the situation, etc. Once it settles and a pattern is established, in particular the relationships between the various protagonists, then the film begins to get going and it becomes the action film that Zack Snyder, it's director, has clearly wanted it to be all along. There are shades of 300 (Snyder 2006) in many of the fight sequences with liberal use of slow-motion footage to allow the audience to linger over the sonic spectacle that is a punch or a kick... Sound effects are significant in the film and are used to both punctuate sequences but also to provide a rhythm to the action itself. The music used in the film is also particularly evident, foregrounded because of its frequent incongruity - sometimes conscious, for comic effect but at other times I'm not sure whether Snyder and his team simply got it wrong. Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelulah' intrudes - for ironic effect, no doubt - and Dylan's 'All Along the Watchtower', the Hendrix version, just had to be in there somewhere..! As the pace picks up so the film becomes familiar as a graphic novel adaptation, pitting heroes against villains in a race to save the world and humanity with it. I won't spoil it for those who haven't seen it but the film does contain some quite striking and unexpected images as it moves towards its denouement, shots that are more reminiscent of 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick 1968) than other graphic novel films. That said other Moore adaptations such as V for Vendetta (James McTeigue 2005) are also visually exciting. Anyway, I enjoyed this film although at a mammoth 160 minutes it requires a significant investment of time. It has made me want to go back to Moore's graphic novel and I will no doubt watch it again afterwards...