FILM REVIEW OF ''WATCHMEN'' (2009)

Anybody who has read Alan Moore’s grim but ground-breaking graphic novel “Watchmen” should enjoy the R-rated, 161-minute, Warner Brothers/Paramount Studios’ big-screen adaptation. “Dawn of the Dead” director Zack Snyder’s “Watchmen” (**** out of ****) ranks as the best costumed crime fighters movie of all time. Think of it as the “Gone with the Wind” of superhero sagas. “Watchmen” makes both “The Dark Knight” and “Batman Begins” look like adolescent fantasies. The crime busters of “Watchmen” aren’t role models, and the novel and the film both emerge as hopelessly cynical with cosmic irony galore. Scenarists David (“X-Men” & “X-Men 2”) Hayter and newcomer Alex Tse have retained about 90 percent of Moore’s novel, but Moore refused to let the studios plaster his name on the movie. Presumably, Moore hasn’t recovered from the blasphemous Sean Connery movie “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” that left a bad taste in his mouth.

This exciting epic about a faction of superheroes based in New York City who come out of retirement (call it the dark flipside of “The Incredibles”) to save the world from itself qualifies as an elaborate exercise in cutting-edge computer-generated visuals and high-octane, adrenaline-laced heroics. Parents who take their children to see “Watchmen” ought to be reported to the Department of Human Services. Although the violence isn’t gratuitous, “Watchmen” features scenes of acute brutality and carnage. An unsavory superhero guns down a pregnant Vietnamese woman with extreme prejudice after she slashes his face with a broken beer bottle. In another scene, a prison inmate brandishes a portable, electric circular saw and mistakenly cuts off another inmate’s forearms. At least two characters are atomized into a splatter of bloody entrails, and a kidnapper dies from a meat cleaver slammed repeatedly into his skull. Violence is one aspect of “Watchmen,” while nudity is quite another. “Watchmen” is undoubtedly the first mainstream Hollywood movie that presents full frontal male nudity, too. The only genuine superhero, Dr. Manhattan, parades around more often than not in his birthday suit, looking like Obsession cologne product placement. There is probably a message in all this nudity, but I’ll leave that to your imagination.

The far-fetched action unfolds one dark, gloomy night with one of these crime fighters, Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan of “Grey’s Anatomy”), swaps blows with an assailant who has invaded his high-rise apartment. In an amusing reference to his last movie, director Zach Snyder has designated 300 as the number of Comedian’s apartment. The assailant beats Comedian to a pulp and then propels him through a plate-glass window without a qualm. Comedian plunges many stories to the street below and splatters in a bloody pile of limbs and legs. Comedian’s yellow smiley face badge lands in his spreading pool of blood. Naturally, the N.Y.P.D. doesn’t have a clue. One of Comedian’s fellow crime fighters, Rorschach (Jackie Earle Halley of the 1976 “Bad News Bears”), launches his own investigation. Rorschach warns the rest of his cohorts, Night Owl 2 (Patrick Wilson of “Lakeview Terrace”), Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup of “Almost Famous”), Ozymandias (Matthew Goode of “Match Point”), and Silk Spectre 2 (Valerie Perrine lookalike Malin Akerman of “27 Dresses”) that somebody is out to slaughter them. Unless you’ve perused Moore’s novel, you’ll never solve the mystery.

For the record, Night Owl 2 is the equivalent of Batman, without a Robin, who flies around in a stealth fighter that resembles an electric shaver. Silk Spectre 2 is a butt kicking Wonder Woman clone. She doesn’t need a man to hold her hand, especially when she helps liberate one of her own during a prison break with convicts lining up to smudge her make-up with fists and feet. Rorschach is a pint-sized Humphrey Bogart type who wears a stocking over his face with an ink blot pattern that shifts. He is an uncompromising crime buster who sees life in terms of good and evil with no shades of gray. Ozymandias is the smartest man in the world with a flair for public relations. He has the ability to move around as rapidly as Ricochet Rabbit. Dr. Manhattan is a tall, blue, bald, blank-eyed muscular male who wears eye-liner and mascara, hates wearing clothing and can atomize anything with a thought. Again, Dr. Manhattan is the only superhero in the Watchmen group. Dr. Manhattan’s real-life companions can survive the worst anybody can dish out with no ill effects.

DC Comics published Moore’s graphic, twelve-chapter novel in 1986 and 1987. Currently, DC has released a 5-hour plus motion comic book version of “Watchmen” on DVD that contains more than Hayter and Tse condensed into their complex screenplay. Like the novel, the theatrical “Watchmen” takes place back in 1985. Essentially, “Watchmen” is a science-fiction saga about an alternate version of America. Snyder’s movie condenses over twenty years of costumed crime fighter history during the opening credits. Indeed, “Watchmen” combines elements of “Forrest Gump” and every Oliver Stone movie since “Platoon.” President John Kennedy shakes hands with Dr. Manhattan, while President Richard Nixon exploits Dr. Manhattan as a nuclear deterrent. The story includes JFK’s assassination in Dallas, Texas, with a clear view of his assassin. In the time altered universe of “Watchmen,” America wins the Vietnam War largely through Dr. Manhattan’s intervention.

In the beginning, Dr. Manhattan was ordinary Jewish physicist Jonathan Osterman. He died tragically during an accident at a top-secret, government research lab that disintegrated his body. He manages to reconstitute himself and emerges as America’s chief weapon against the Soviet Union. Nixon dispatches Dr. Manhattan to Vietnam with Comedian, and Dr. Manhattan wins the war. Indeed, Dr. Manhattan is the only genuine super hero with super powers while everybody else is human but very resilient. Despite victory in Vietnam, America still wallows in domestic turmoil that degenerates into chaos and street violence. Hippies plant flowers in the rifle barrels of military policemen who massacre them. The police go on strike and eventually Nixon passes legislation that outlaws vigilante-minded costume clad crime fighters that aren’t employed by the government. Interestingly, the clock that showed the tension between the Soviet Union and the United States is referred to as the Doomsday Clock, a neat concept considering the constant tension between the Soviets and the Americans during the Cold War.
Later, under the Keene Act, Dr. Manhattan and The Comedian are the only costume clad crime fighters who are licensed to perform heroic feats.

Basically, the “Watchmen” plot defies synopsis. Like Moore’s novel, the story boasts enough material for an entire film franchise, but “Watchmen” does an excellent job of bringing all the action together in less than three hours to create a coherent but outlandish parable of an alternate future. The idea that victory in Vietnam would not have made a difference in the American Dream is fairly audacious for any movie. Moreover, Snyder and his scenarists take the concept of vigilante heroes farther than even “The Dark Knight” dared and meditates on the ultimate contradictions involved with these costume clad crime fighters. Furthermore, not all of the Watchmen survive; the Comedian & Rorschach bite the dust. Not only does the Comedian deserve his fate because he raped Sally Jupiter, but he also killed a Vietnamese woman pregnant with his child. The Comedian acquires his scar because of Vietnamese woman. You won’t find stuff like this in any super hero movie. The 9/11 finale with its surprise ending is a mind-blower that will leave you reeling. Like “Forrest Gump,” “Watchmen” inserts several landmark rock songs to underline its multiple messages. “Watchmen” lacks a happy ending and the problems that humanity faces here aren’t simple.

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL" (2008)

The landmark 1951 science fiction fable “The Day the Earth Stood Still” (**** out of ****) concerned an extraterrestrial emissary named Klaatu (Michael Rennie of TV’s “The Third Man”) who came to Washington, D.C., in a flying saucer to warn Earthlings that they must not “apply atomic energy to spaceships that will create a threat to the peace and security of other planets.” In the dreary, special effects laden remake, the intergalactic Klaatu (Keanu Reeves) shows up in a huge sphere in Manhattan’s Central Park to warn Earthlings that they have treated the planet with the same lack of respect that they treat each other and have wrought so much damage that they must be obliterated. Hmn, hasn’t Al Gore already said that without a spaceship and a monstrous robot in his recent documentary "An Inconvenient Truth?"

Environmentalists will no doubt applaud the remake for its global warming message, but popcorn-minded audiences aching for thrills and chills galore may find this high-minded but heavy-handed remake bland to the bone. Mind you, “Exorcism of Emily Rose” director Scott Derrickson and “Last Castle” scenarist David Scrapa have loaded “The Day the Earth Stood Still” (*1/2 out of ****) remake with more action than its relatively tame predecessor. Nevertheless, this superficial sci-fi saga generates little drama or suspense in what amounts to an anemic disaster movie with top-tier special effects. The 8 foot robot Gort that accompanied Klaatu now towers 28 feet tall and it boasts another weapon in it arsenal along with his molten laser beam eyeballs. The filmmakers stage several over-the-top aerial raids on the sphere that recall similar tactics in Roland Emmerich's "Independence Day." Unfortunately, these pyrotechnical displays add little substance to an already insubstantial film.

Pretty Jennifer Connelly gives the best performance, while Keanu Reeves remains as inarticulate as ever as the alien who wants to address world leaders. He was a hundred times better in last year’s shoot’em up “Street Kings.” Kathy Bates gives her best Hilary Clinton impersonation and dresses as tastefully as Sarah Palin. “The Day the Earth Stood Still” springs no surprises with its ecological message.

“The Day the Earth Stood Still” contains a prologue that the original lacked. In 1928, a lone mountain climber (Keanu Reeves of “The Matrix”)in India discovers a shimmering globe in the snow and touches it. When he awakens later from the shock that the object dealt him, he finds a hole has been burnt in his glove and a tiny patch of skin has been removed. The nasty sphere came to harvest the mountain climber's DNA so that it could clone a human body. The action fast-forwards to contemporary times as a military communication satellite detects an object streaking towards Earth with a crash point 78 minutes away in Manhattan. The government assembles an elite team of scientists to deal with the aftermath of this catastrophe since they cannot prevent it. Ignorant government agents come banging on the door of Princeton astrobiologist professor Dr. Helen Benson (Oscar winning Best Actress Jennifer Connelly of “A Beautiful Mind”) and hustle her off to a helicopter and flight to New York City. Initially, the military briefing sequence reminded me more of Ronald Neame's "Meteor" (1979) Michael Bay's "Armageddon" (1998), Mimi Leder's "Deep Impact" (1998)

When Helen isn’t teaching, she is a single mom to her adorably obnoxious African-American stepson Jacob (Jaden Smith of "The Pursuit of Happyness") who hasn’t gotten over the death of his father in combat. Jacob sasses his mom, wears his hair in tassels, and hinders more than helps her later in the action. Of course, everything is forgiven in the fourth quarter when he realizes the error of his ways. Anyway, everybody reacts with shock when the alien spacecraft touches down without turning New York City in a colossal crater. Like his classic predecessor, Klaatu emerges and a trigger-happy U.S. Army soldier pumps a slug into him just as he approaches Helen in a Hazmat outfit, splattering red alien blood on her mask. About that time, a gargantuan robot named Gort emerges from the sphere and emits a laser beam blast that turns all weapons into dust. Klaatu halts Gort from further destruction and lets the authorities rush him to a top-secret surgical suite where a doctor digs out the slug. The doctor informs them all that an embryonic human is swaddled beneath layers of placenta. This human matures rapidly into Keanu Reeves, though the filmmakers neglect to bring up the fate of 1928 mountain climber. In the remake, Klaatu enjoys greater powers than his predecessor. He can use his mind to incapacitate his captors and he does so during a lie detector scene that is prominently features in the trailer. Happily, Klaatu's interrogator is the same size as the alien so Klaatu can don his suit and don and saunter off the military installation.

Since the president and vice president have been evacuated to an undisclosed location, Secretary of Defense Regina Jackson (Kathy Bates of “Primary Colors”) greets Klaatu and refuses to turn him loose despite his having done nothing wrong. Instead, the scientists rush him off for a lie-detector test, but the resourceful Klaatu engineers an easy escape and hits the road with Helen. Jacob joins them and does everything that he can to undermine his mom and Klaatu. Eventually, Helen takes Klaatu to meet Nobel Prize-winning Professor Barnhardt (John Cleese of “Monty Python” fame in a cameo) who received his accolades for biological altruism. The blackboard scene from the original is replicated here, but Klaatu’s dialogue with Barnhardt focuses on the welfare of planet Earth not the escalating arms race. According to Klaatu, there is a shortage of planets for sustaining life and humans have devastated the Earth too such a degree that they must be wiped out. Barnhardt pleads with Klaatu for the future of humanity; he argues that the brink of destruction will prompt humans to change their ways.

Meanwhile, the military abduct Gort, imprison the robot in a silo, and try to cut through its impervious biological skin with a diamond drill. They fail miserably, but the gigantic robot spawns the synthetic equivalent of locust and the locust spread in clouds to destroy mankind and man-made structures. In the original, Gort acted as a policeman for the aliens, while he can reduce himself into a swarm of locust. The military were able to encase Gort but they didn't take him off to a secret army base.

Okay, neither Robert Wise’s “The Day the Earth Stood Still” nor Derrickson’s remake adhered to author Harry Bates’s original pulp short story “Farewell to the Master.” Of course, Wise’s “Earth Stood Still” served as a cautionary anti-Cold War tale about the paranoia of nuclear proliferation as well as an allegorical Christ tale. After all, Klaatu called himself Mr. Carpenter and rose from the dead. Derrickson’s spin has little in common aside from the bare bones basics of Edmund North’s screenplay. Keanu Reeves is ideally cast as the monosyllabic Klaatu and he knows how to deal with nosy traffic cops, but his Klaatu seems a little behind the 8-ball when he realizes that his strategy may not be best. While “The Day the Earth Stood Still” is new, this Keanu Reeves rehash is not an improved version of the timeless original.