The topic of superheroes facing their own personal devils is not new. We’ve seen it many times before. Hancock has seen his kind many times over. The purportedly unfilmable graphic book recently turned into a film is proof that humans will always try to demystify superheroes if only it fulfills their desire to explain the extraordinary challenges they, themselves, encounter in their nondescript lives. The conflicts and troubles of not-so-human beings in ‘Watchmen’ offer this kind of giddy pleasure.

The deconstruction of the superhero is elaborated well enough in the neo-noir film about not-too-distant America. It is almost uncanny that the themes of neurosis, bad habits, sad endings, misuse of science and technology, frightening governmental control, and abuse of power are all placed under the purview of superheroism.

By and large, ‘Watchmen’ is all about ensuring the preservation of humanity, even if that means tons of crab mentality, decimating the competition, and a generous heaping of vigilantism.

In the end, the big-budgeted ‘Watchmen’ is a combination of superb art direction and acting that sounds like a first amateur read-through straight from the pages of the comic book. It is nothing but the graphic novel that has merely morphed into multi-frames for motion.

One can also look at it as a 163-minute festival of violence with an unusual style of musical scoring, or a fabulously-dressed airhead.

Alas, ‘the times they are a-changing’ the film is not.

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