Watchmen (2009)

Never Compromise.  Not Even in the Face of Armageddon.

I have finally reached my goal of one review per day for an entire year.  I will be taking a week off to rest before I decide what I’m going to be doing next, but you can rest assured that I will still be writing reviews for as long as I’m able to keep myself motivated.  During the course of my first year, I’ve reviewed many movies of all different types of genres, but I think my nerdiness has come out in many of my reviews and let you all know that one of my favorite types of movie is the comic book movie.  When I did my favorite movies from each genre, I intentionally skipped the comic book movie because there are three movies that I have decided are my top three favorite, but I have not yet been able to confidently say I prefer one to another.  I reviewed Avengers while it was in theaters, which is the same time it joined the list.  Later, I reviewed the Dark Knight as its sequel was coming out, and it held its ground.  But no one asked me to do the third, and an opportune time would not be presenting itself in the near future as there’s no sequel or prequel coming to this movie anytime soon.  And so I decided that I would review the third movie as my anniversary present to myself.  This movie is Watchmen, based on a comic book by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, written by David Hayter and Alex Tse, directed by Zack Snyder, and starring Billy Crudup, Matthew Goode, Malin Akerman, Patrick Wilson, Jackie Earle Haley, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Carla Gugino, Stephen McHattie, Matt Frewer, Laura Mennell, Robert Wisden, and Danny Woodburn.

October 12^th, 1985.  A comedian died in New York.  Well, more specifically the Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a retired masked crime fighter is thrown out of a window by an unknown assailant.  Another costumed crime fighter operating outside of the law named Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) goes to investigate and jumps to the conclusion that someone is trying to kill his comrades, so he sets about warning them.  He goes first to his former partner, Daniel Dreiberg, formerly the second Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson), and then goes to the nearly omnipotent Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup) and his lover, Laurie Jupiter, the second Silk Spectre (Malin Akerman).  All of them think Rorschach is just being paranoid, but Dan decides to relay the message to Adrian Veidt, formerly Ozymandias (Matthew Goode), who shares the skepticism of the others.  Rorschach is unconvinced and continues his investigation while Dr. Manhattan and Veidt focus on trying to stave off nuclear war with their free energy solution.

Oh man do I love this movie.  And I was also extremely shocked to find out that this is not an entirely popular opinion.  Both the critic and the audience reviews on Rotten Tomatoes are sitting around the 65% range.  I don’t get that.  Watchmen is not really your ordinary comic book movie.  It’s got less action that you’d typically expect to find, but I feel that it’s a lot smarter and has a much better story.  That is mostly thanks to Alan Moore since the movie seems to be pretty much a shot for shot adaptation of his original story.  From what I gathered, his original comic book was a much more powerful political statement when he originally made it, but I hadn’t read that by the time I saw this movie.  I just knew that it was a greatly lauded comic book that they were turning into a movie, and the movie blew me away.  I feel that I may have benefited from not having read the comic book when I saw the movie because the great reveals at the end of the movie were not spoiled for me.  The huge reveal involving Adrian Veidt was great, and even the smaller, more personal one involving Laurie was extremely powerful.  There were a couple of other things to say about the movie, but I feel they deserve a ::SPOILER ALERT:: so that the reveals won’t be ruined for you, and will allow you to enjoy it the same way I did.  I thought it was a fantastic twist that Veidt gives a speech like a Bond villain to Rorschach and Nite Owl that makes you think they’ll still have time to stop it, and the twist comes when Veidt was smart enough to know that this was a possibility, so he had set his plan into motion 35 minutes prior.  I would say that there was a part to his plan that I never really got behind.  I don’t know why it was necessary that Dr. Manhattan take the heat for what Veidt did for the plan to work.  I actually kind of understood (without condoning) why they killed so many people to bring peace to the world, but I feel like the same thing would happen whether it was Veidt taking the heat or Dr. Manhattan, which would make it unnecessary for my favorite character, Rorschach, to die.  But it was a minor issue I took with the movie and didn’t really disturb my enjoyment.  ::END SPOILERS::

I think the direction of the movie won me over before the story did.  The quality of the story sunk in towards the end, but the quality of the direction was able to win me over very early on.  It’s really a visual delight, and the music is also a big win.  I was on board to a great degree from the opening fight between the Comedian and the unknown assailant, which was a great fight scene with music that worked well with the scene while being in contrast to what was happening.  The opening credit sequence was also fantastic.  It tells the story of the decline of the superhero and places them into real, historic situations, and they back that up with strong visuals and a great Bob Dylan song.  They include the sailor kiss from the famous photograph, the Comedian shoots JFK, the hippie chick putting the flower in the gun barrel, the moon landing, and even that famous Rage Against the Machine album cover.  …I’m being told that this was actually a real occurrence and not just an album cover…  But the look and the soundtrack of the move kept my attention all the way through.  Even if the story of the movie was no good, I would’ve been on board with the movie from these things alone.  The movie didn’t have that many fights, but the ones they had were fantastic.  The highlights include Dan and Laurie beating down some gang members, Nite Owl and Silk Spectre beating down some prisoners, and Rorschach fighting his way out of Moloch’s apartment.  All of them were really brutal and awesome.  The fight with Hollis Mason and the gang members towards the end of the movie was also fantastic and emotional.  I would say it was a little corny and tasteless for the Nite Owl’s hovercraft to blow its fiery load just as the Nite Owl himself did.  I also thought it was funny to try to see all of the things that were on Veidt’s various TV screens towards the end of the movie.  I was able to catch a glimpse of what appeared to be porn, a scene from Rambo, and that wacky Fed Ex commercial.  I don’t know if there was significance to any of that, but I found it interesting to try to pick them out.

The performances in the movie were all wins for me.  Jackie Earle Haley was the best one for me.  I thought Rorschach was friggin’ awesome.  His narration in the movie made me imagine what it would sound like for Christian Bale’s Batman to narrate a Max Payne game.  Generally morose, and always raspy.  But Rorschach was a total badass throughout the movie.  The story of what made Rorschach was great, the story of what made him more brutal was even better, and I particularly loved all of his interactions with Big Figure in jail.  And, on top of his badassdom, he also had a great scene at the end that got me a little choked up for him.  Also, do you know what I’ve always felt was sadly missing from other comic book movies like Avengers and the Dark Knight?  Tits!  And the only thing that would make that better is if they belonged to Malin Akerman.  SCORE!  She is so hot.  …And that’s all I have to say about her.  She did a good job and everything, but I have a one track mind.  Matthew Goode did a great job as well, but the only thing that amused me enough to take note of about him was how heroic he was when the guy was trying to kill him and he first ducked behind the businessmen before taking the guy down.

I love Watchmen.  The story is brilliant and the adaptation of it is fantastic, powered along by amazing visuals and a great soundtrack.  The performances are also pretty fantastic, with Jackie Earle Haley leading the bunch in my opinion, but everyone doing their thing very well.  And at least one of those performances brought a great set of boobs, and that’s alright by me.  I think this is a fantastic movie and I don’t understand the concept of anyone not liking it, but apparently it happens so watch this movie skeptically.  But do watch this movie.  Watchmen gets “A pretty butterfly” out of “I’m not locked in here with you.  You’re locked in here with ME!”

Let’s get these reviews more attention, people.  Post reviews on your webpages, tell your friends, do some of them crazy Pinterest nonsense.  Whatever you can do to help my reviews get more attention would be greatly appreciated.  You can also add me on FaceBook and Twitter.  Don’t forget to leave me some comments.  Your opinions and constructive criticisms are always appreciated.

The Scorpion King (2002)

Live Free.  Rule Well.

This review request serves two purposes.  The first is that it’s a trilogy and one that, by the end of these reviews, will probably make the Jurassic Park trilogy look so much better.  The second purpose it serves is to knock out another review request from coworker Eric.  Today’s movie is not the movie that was requested, but the first part in the trilogy.  Eric suggested that I review the third movie, which will most likely be awful.  I decided to watch all three, so that I don’t get left out of the highly cerebral storyline.  Well, let’s jump into it.  The first movie in this trilogy is a spinoff of another movie franchise called The Mummy, making this movie The Scorpion King, written by Stephen Sommers, William Osborne, and David Hayter, directed by Chuck Russell, and starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Steven Brand, Kelly Hu, Michael Clarke Duncan, Bernard Hill, Grant Heslov, Peter Facinelli, Branscombe Richmond, Roger Rees, Ralph Moeller, and Tyler Mane.

The Akkadians are the baddest group of assassin’s in the land.  The last three remaining Akkadians – Mathayus (The Rock), his half-brother Jesup (Branscombe Richmond), and some other random dude – are hired by King Pheron (Roger Rees) to kill the sorcerer that is bringing victory to the Egyptian Emperor Memnon (Steven Brand) with her prophetic powers.  The three Akkadians get into Memnon’s camp and are instantly ambushed, having been betrayed by King Pheron’s son, Takmet (Peter Facinelli).  Mathayus escapes the ambush, but the other two Akkadians fall.  Mathayus gets into the tent of the sorcerer but finds that it is not some old dude as you’d expect.  Instead, it’s super hot Cassandra (Kelly Hu).  Memnon and his troops enter the tent and capture Mathayus, but Cassandra predicts that horrible things will happen to Memnon if he orders Mathayus executed.  Instead, Mathayus is sentenced to be buried in the sand and have ants eat his head, along with horse thief Arpid (Grant Heslov).  Together, they escape, and Mathayus sets his sights on getting revenge on Memnon.

Much like the majority of the movies that this movie spun off from, I found this movie to be a lot of fun.  It’s not particularly smart or well-written, but it’s fun and has some great fight scenes in it.  And, since that should be what you expect when going into a movie like this, you should leave fairly satisfied.  The opening of the movie serves little purpose to the story and is only there to show that The Rock is a badass.  He’s just going in and saving his brother from some small group of people that are going to kill him, and he does with extreme prejudice.  Immediately afterwards, this scene is completely forgotten about because, as I said, it had nothing to do with the story.  But it was a pretty badass fight.  It sets up how badass the Rock is by having him inexplicably climbing up a cliff with a giant boulder attached to his back (the point of which I still don’t know), then he drops in through the chimney, emerges from a cloud of smoke, and whoops ass on everyone in the tent single-handedly.  He even knocks someone out by wrapping his bow around their head, pulling it taught, and letting it snap on their face.  That’s the international sign of a badass.  The movie’s actual story picks up right after this scene.  It’s a decent story without any surprises, but it’s mainly just set up for more fights.  It’s a basic tale of revenge that is then superseded by taking out an evil ruler for the greater good, then you throw a little love story in the middle.  But the action and the fights are fun, some of the dialogue borders on clever, while other parts of the dialogue are just cheesy.  Like at the end of the clash of the titans (The Rock and Michael Clarke Duncan) where the Rock says “We are brothers in the same cause”, and should probably be given an award for delivering that line while keeping a straight face.  It’s the kind of movie that you just need to shut your brain off and look at all the pretty colors.  If you don’t, you may get bothered by the fact that they totally ripped off Indiana Jones by having him cut the giant gong thing off and rolling it out the window to escape a hail of arrows.

The performances accomplished what they came to do.  Personally, I like watching the Rock.  I don’t know if everyone feels the same as I do, but that guy’s charismatic.  And, above that, he’s so much better at fake ass-kicking than most action movie stars.  One person I like watching way more than the Rock is Kelly Hu.  Gundamn that’s a good lookin’ bird!  And this movie features her in one of two phases: nearly naked, and completely naked.  Yeah, you don’t see anything because of strategically placed hair, but I’m okay with it.  I know that Michael Clarke Duncan can really bring it in the acting department, but he left it at home for this movie.  He didn’t need his acting chops for this movie.  It seems like he likes to just do a couple of dumb movies that he’ll have fun with, and that’s what he did here.  I never really believed Steven Brand as a badass.  I just can’t see this unimpressive white boy being a threat to the Rock.  It’s kind of the same thing they did in Shanghai Knights, where they decided the bad guy would be this unimpressive white guy so they just said that he was the greatest sword fighter ever so you have to just give it a pass.

An unimpressive story and some corny dialogue does very little to remove this movie from the soft spot in my heart … that I still need to get a doctor to look at.  Good action, fun times, and an appealing cast – including the Rock in his first starring role and super hot Kelly Hu – makes this movie enjoyable.  I actually purchased this twice, but I’m not saying that as cause for you to purchase it at least once.  I just upgraded to BluRay.  I cannot promise that you will have the same kind of fun with this movie as I did, but it’s at least worth watching.  The Scorpion King gets “I’ll kill half, you kill half” out of “No need for concern, Miss.”

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