Watchmen   Starring: Malin Akerman, Billy Crudup, Matthew Goode, Carla Gugino, Jackie Earle, Haley Jeffrey and Dean Morgan Paramount Home Entertainment RRP: £19.99/£24.99 PHE1085/PHE1108 Certificate: 18 Available 27 July 2009

When a former colleague, The Comedian is murdered, the outlawed masked vigilante Rorschach sets out to uncover a plot to kill and discredit all past and present superheroes. Rorschach reconnects with his former crime-fighting legion, a disbanded group of retired superheroes, including Nite Owl II, Silk Spectre II, Ozymandias and Dr. Manhattan. Together, the heroes must expose a sinister plan that puts the human race and their own existence in grave danger. Their mission is to watch over humanity... but who is watching the Watchmen...?

Watchmen is set in an alternate 1985 America; a world darkened by fear and paranoia in which costumed superheroes are part of the fabric of everyday society, and the Doomsday Clock - which charts the USA’s tension with the Soviet Union - moves closer to nuclear midnight. President Nixon is still in office and Doctor Manhattan is the only superhero that has any actual super powers.

For anyone who hasn't read the original comic book series, then you're in for a treat, as this story takes the usual superhero league tale and flips it on its head. This is also a movie that stands up to repeated viewings, in fact to get a lot of the subtle references it's almost essential that the movie is watched at least a couple of times.

Throughout the film there are countless shots that pay homage to other sources. These include a shot of Rorschach walking in the rain which is framed like the famous picture of James Dean in Times Square; a shot that pays homage to Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper; and even a shot borrowed from Raiders of the Lost Ark (not so easy to spot this one - it's from the scene in Raiders where the monkey is poisoned and you see it's body with the camera positioned above a ceiling fan. There are also very obvious visual references to Apocalypse Now; Terminator 2: Judgment Day; and Leon. There's also a great little reference to the Neil Armstrong joke which over time has become an urban legend. As we see Armstrong walk on the moon, in the opening minutes of the film, he says: "Good luck Mr Gorsky". If you don't know the background to this urban myth type "Good luck Mr Gorsky" into Google.

To be honest though the film is a little self indulgent and a unnecessarily long (at just over 2 hours and forty minutes in length) to host the attention of most of today's audience. Although, to be totally fair, apart from a few rather pointless scenes, there's very little that could have been cut without ruining the film.

Disc one contains the movie and one extra in the form of Mechanics: Technologies of a Fantastic World (16 min, 10 sec). This is introduced by a physics professor who uses comic book characters to illustrate physics principles. He worked on the movie as a consultant to ensure that the physics in the plot were as realistic as possible. He also answers a few of the questions movie goers will be asking themselves, like why is Doctor Manhattan blue and could an owl ship really fly?

Disc two includes The Phenomenon: The Comic That Changes Comics (27 min, 37 sec which looks at the origin of the comic book); Real Superheroes: Real Vigilantes (25 min, 15 sec look at real life vigilantes including The Guardian Angels and Ecliptico); Watchmen: Video Journals (11 short featurettes on numerous aspects of the movie. Each approximately 3 mins in length); Viral Videos: NBS Nightly News (3 min, 04 sec raw and extended footage of the Nightly News segment which appeared in the movie); and My Chemical Romance Desolation Raw Music Video (3 min, 07 sec music video).

The extras on the second disc are not really worth shelling out an extra £5 for. Unless you are a huge fan of the movie I'd stick with the single disc edition. I was also surprised to see there was no audio commentary.

8

Darren Rea