Adapting the best-loved graphic novel of all time was never going to be an easy task for the director Zack Snyder, particularly in an age when the whim of fanboys can make or break a film even before it reaches release. Set in the mid-1980s, Watchmen follows a group of retired superheroes who return to work in a world on the brink of nuclear apocalypse. It begins with the murder of The Comedian (-Jeffrey Dean Morgan) by a mystery assailant, in a fight that sets the pace for the rest of the film. After learning of the killing, the masked vigilante Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) begins to -believe that someone is picking off superheroes and decides to warn his former cohorts. Meanwhile, the disgraced president Richard Nixon remains in the White House after winning a third term. As the doomsday clock ticks ever closer to Armageddon, there are fears that America's first line of defence against a Soviet missile attack - the bright blue superbeing Dr Manhattan (Billy Crudup) - could be compromised, after revelations that he is leaking cancer-causing radiation. Although there are some changes to the original story, Snyder's film follows the pages of the graphic novel faithfully. With one exception - the foppish Matthew Goode as Ozymandias - the film is both well cast and acted. The extensive use of slow-motion, period music and impressive visual effects also elegantly weaves the corrupted world of the book. After more than 20 years in development hell and reports that the story was "unfilmable", Snyder's take on the deranged epic is no masterpiece, but neither is it the disappointment that many had predicted.
