Let me set the stage for you.  It’s Friday night at around 8:50PM I am sitting at one of my favorite eateries, WoW (world of wings) in the providence shopping center with my buddies Jim and Mike.  I am having a beer as we eat hot wings hanging out waiting to hit the theatre to see the Watchmen movie at 10.  Having read the graphic novel, and knowing neither Mike nor Jim either one had read the comics I am ultra excited to see their reactions to many of the things I know will be in the movie.

I put this movie up there alongside the Dark Knight in terms of its accomplishments.  What I mean by this is, if you are looking for a story that shows the raw human condition, a story where there are NO heroes and in the end NO one wins this is the story for you.

Visually I have rarely seen such attention to detail.  The movie was visually stunning.  Although quite a bit of it was CGI it wasn’t noticeable.  The camera work was top notch.  I was engrossed in the story from the first moment.  The atmosphere set in the late 70’s early 80’s was dead on both visually and musically.  I found myself looking over at Mike and Jim both smiling at the nuances of 80’s commercials running on TVs or a song in the soundtrack that made us remember our high school years.

Zack Snyder did a fantastic job being both fathful to the original story and also artistically brilliant when it came to bringing to life each frame of the comic.

Although it was a long movie, I didn’t mind it.  As far as lengthy films go I found myself so riveted that I didn’t even notice.  The story is altered only slightly from the book in that the ending has changed only slightly.  Knowing the original story I found the change worked well and did not detract from the story at all.

This movie I put alongside just a few other films that have evoked an actual emotional response from me.  I found my range of emotions moving from anger, to a true feeling of helplessness, to complete sadness.  This all stemmed from the truths revealed that people are really petty and cruel.  No matter which character you find yourself identifying with at the time they always show you a hard side that makes you cringe.  People that are supposed to be “heroes” are really just people like you and I.  Not one is perfect and that I think is what we are meant to come away realizing.

..I was thoroughly impressed and I hope to see the picture again.  I give it 4.5 stars out of 5 and further using a scale that my friends and I developed at work where films fall into three basic categories of watch it once, watch it twice or watch a film again and again, this one is definitely a watch again and again movie!