Watchmen: Director’s Cut

Review By: Tom Herrmann
TomHerrmann@TheCinemaSource.com

Movie Grade: A-
DVD Features Grade: A
Overall Grade: A

After seeing the theatrical version of Watchmen I gave it a rave review and had highly anticipated the DVD release to check out some of the special features and get an inside look on one of my new favorite super-hero films. You can probably imagine how I felt when I heard that there was about a half hour added to the theatrical footage.

Apparently they felt that the audiences wouldn’t sit for a three hour show and decided to release it all on the director’s cut. Regardless of when we got to finally see this in its entirety, it is here now and that is all that matters.

Watchmen is in short, a backhanded super-hero film that puts comic books and all of their conventions in their place. We open with the incredibly graceful death of The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a member of a now disbanded group of masked hero. After his death is written off by the police Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) does some investigating on his own and believe that there is an assassin who wants to pick off the remaining former Watchmen. Rorschach playing detective is only one of the storylines of the film. There is also the struggle between the USSR and the US in this dystopian parallel to 1985 along with the struggles these former heroes face with heir growing ages.

As opposed to deleted scenes from other films, the additional footage in this director’s cut proved to be very valuable, but not crucial to the film. There are some segments with obvious reasons for removal, but others raised some questions. Particularly the scene where the original Nite Owl (Stephen McHattie) meets his demise. The film works well without it included because he didn’t hold a major part, but it explains why he doesn’t appear like some of the other members of the first set of Watchmen did. This also caused the removal of Nite Owl II (Patrick Wilson)’s reaction to finding out about his murder that reveals a much more renegade side of him.

The nerd inside of me can’t emphasize how excellent the bonus features on this DVD are. For a two disc copy there aren’t many features but the ones that are more satisfying than most DVDs loaded with features. The Phenomenon: The Comic that Changed Comics is a breakdown of the background of the Watchmen graphic novel and a look at its effects on the comic book world and pop culture as a whole. Even though I haven’t had the please of reading the novel itself, it divulges a lot of interesting information about the characters and what they are actually meant to represent. Anyone who has read the novel will most likely enjoy it even more than I did for the little things that didn’t make their way into the film.

Watchmen Video Journals is another great ...