Advanced Search >
Help Me Search

Movies

Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
Best / Worst of the Decade

Wide Releases
Now In Theaters

sort by namesort by score

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Limited Releases
Now In Theaters

sort by namesort by score

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Watchmen

EMAILPRINTWarner Bros. Pictures

Watchmen reviews
56
7.5 User Score:

Mixed or average reviews

Based on 39 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

Based on 780 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >

Movie Info

Genre(s): Action  |  Adventure  |  Fantasy  |  Sci-fi  |  Suspense/Thriller

Written by: Alan Moore (graphic novel)
Dave Gibbons (graphic novel illustrator)
Alex Tse
David Hayter

Directed by: Zack Snyder

Release Date:
Theatrical: March 6, 2009
DVD: July 21, 2009

Running Time: 163 minutes, Color

Origin: UK | USA

Summary

RATING: R for strong graphic violence, sexuality, nudity and language

Starring Jackie Earle Haley, Patrick Wilson, Matthew Goode, Billy Crudup, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Malin Akerman, Carla Gugino, Stephen McHattie, and Matt Frewer

Watchmen is set in an alternate 1985 America in which costumed superheroes are part of the fabric of everyday society. When one of his former colleagues is murdered, the outlawed but no less determined masked vigilante Rorschach sets out to uncover a plot to kill and discredit all past and present superheroes. As he reconnects with his former crime-fighting legion--a disbanded group of retired superheroes, only one of whom has true powers--Rorschach glimpses a wide-ranging and disturbing conspiracy with links to their shared past and catastrophic consequences for the future. Their mission is to watch over humanity...but who is watching the Watchmen? (Warner Bros.)

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

New York Post Kyle Smith

Director Zack Snyder's cerebral, scintillating follow-up to "300" seems, to even a weary filmgoer's eye, as fresh and magnificent in sound and vision as "2001" must have seemed in 1968, yet in its eagerness to argue with itself, it resembles "A Clockwork Orange."

Read Full Review >
100

Premiere Patrick Parker

The whole thing works, especially for the non-comic audience. Plus, the music is perfect, especially the opening montage set to Bob Dylan's, "The Times They Are a-Changin."

Read Full Review >
100

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

It's a compelling visceral film -- sound, images and characters combined into a decidedly odd visual experience that evokes the feel of a graphic novel. It seems charged from within by its power as a fable; we sense it’s not interested in a plot so much as with the dilemma of functioning in a world losing hope.

Read Full Review >
100

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Part conscious and part unconscious, Watchmen tells us of a world without hope and then makes us wonder if we're already living in it.

Read Full Review >
100

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

A terrific comic-book movie, the most completely satisfying and unsettling one I've ever seen.

Read Full Review >
83

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

The casting clicks; the visuals have leaped right out of Dave Gibbons' original panels; the action is brutal, stylish and well-staged, and -- with most of the major characters, themes and symbolism are retained in an abbreviated form -- the 2 1/2-hour film makes an enjoyably esoteric Cliff's Notes version of the book.

Read Full Review >
80

Empire Ian Nathan

Okay, it isn't the graphic novel, but Zack Snyder clearly gives a toss, creating a smart, stylish, decent adaptation, if low on accessibility for the non-convert.

Read Full Review >
80

Time Richard Corliss

Watchmen has moments of greatness. It proves again that the action movie is where the best young Hollywood brains have gone to bring flesh to their fantasies.

Read Full Review >
75

TV Guide Cammila Albertson

It may not include every nuance of the graphic novel, but it captures as much as any adaptation could -- which may not satisfy the fanboys, but it's probably more than enough for everyone else.

Read Full Review >
75

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Watchmen is a fitting tribute to Alan Moore's fascinating graphic novel, even if he refused to let his name be used in the credits.

Read Full Review >
75

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

Watchmen is a spectacularly violent movie.

Read Full Review >
75

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

This movie will shake your windows and rattle your walls.

Read Full Review >
75

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

Snyder's Watchmen keeps moving so assuredly, it's nearly impossible not to get swept along.

Read Full Review >
75

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Like the writings of William Burroughs or Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction," Watchmen falls into the category of what might be called meta-pulp, a multilayered fiction that serves as a parody and commentary on our collective bottom-feeding fantasies.

Read Full Review >
75

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

The 155 minutes of Watchmen are studded with inspired spectacles: fights and flights and imaginary creatures and reworked bits of history.

Read Full Review >
67

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Even Watchmen fanatics may be doomed to a disappointment that results from trying to stay THIS faithful to a comic book.

Read Full Review >
63

ReelViews James Berardinelli

For the Watchmen fan, this may be as close to the Holy Grail as a motion picture could come. For everyone else, a sense of frustration and disappointment is not unwarranted. Watchmen is many things but it is not the Next Great Comic Book Movie or the film that will advance graphic novel adaptations to the next level.

Read Full Review >
63

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Stumbles and sometimes falls on its top-heavy ambitions. But there are also flashes of visual brilliance and performances, especially from Haley and Crudup, that drill deep into the novel's haunted soul.

Read Full Review >
63

Boston Globe Ty Burr

The best moments in Watchmen, then, work as delirious music-videos.

Read Full Review >
60

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Snyder stands revealed here as more of a beginner than a visionary in his uncertain approach to making an on-screen world come alive.

Read Full Review >
60

New York Daily News Joe Neumaier

The most pleasant surprise in the movie adaptation of "Watchmen" is the pop-art fusion set off by placing superheroes in a "real" world. The film's biggest challenge – and accomplishment – was making that plausible.

Read Full Review >
50

USA Today Claudia Puig

In the canon of comic-book movies, it's not as campy bad as the "Batman" starring George Clooney, but nowhere near the caliber of the Spider-Man movies or "The Dark Knight." It may have more style, but it's only a jot more entertaining than "Catwoman."

Read Full Review >
50

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Watchmen is neither desecratory disaster nor total triumph. In filming David Hayter and Alex Tse's adaptation of the most ambitious superhero comic book ever written, director Zack Snyder has managed to address the cult while pandering to the masses.

Read Full Review >
50

Variety Justin Chang

The movie is ultimately undone by its own reverence; there's simply no room for these characters and stories to breathe of their own accord, and even the most fastidiously replicated scenes can feel glib and truncated.

Read Full Review >
50

Washington Post Philip Kennicott

Watchmen is a bore. Sad to say, after a wait of more than two decades, the much-anticipated adaptation of the world's most celebrated graphic novel is long, dull and subject to what might be called the "Lord of the Rings" problem: It sinks under the weight of its reverence for the original.

Read Full Review >
50

Slate Dana Stevens

Watchmen fans wondering whether their graphic novel has been ruined will be thrilled to see its key scenes reproduced with storyboardlike fidelity, but those who've never read it will be unlikely to understand what the big deal was in the first place.

Read Full Review >
50

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Watchmen is worth seeing, fan or no, for Haley's squirmy presence alone, and all the other characters are also well-served.

Read Full Review >
50

Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar

Watchmen is indeed gorgeous, with Gibbons' original work reproduced and – in some cases – improved upon by detailed F/X, but even at a healthy two hours and 41 minutes the story feels truncated. Even abrupt.

Read Full Review >
42

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Although the film's visuals are a cut above, say, "Sin City," another serioso graphic novel-turned-movie, it has the same mood: a film-noir-ish soddenness punctuated by megaviolence. Watchmen is the anti-"Incredibles."

Read Full Review >
40

NPR Bob Mondello

The director recycles some of the better effects from his gladiator epic "300"...and he's being so faithful to the work of comics artist Dave Gibbons that he might as well have used the graphic novel's illustrations as a storyboard.

Read Full Review >
40

Chicago Reader Noah Berlatsky

Director Zack Snyder races through the story, faithfully reproducing this bit of dialogue from Moore and that bit of imagery from Gibbons but never pausing to develop a vision of his own. The result is oddly hollow and disjointed; the actors moving stiffly from one overdetermined tableau to another.

Read Full Review >
40

Newsweek Devin Gordon

Speaking as an admirer, but not an apostle, of the graphic novel, I thought the Watchmen movie was confusing, maddeningly inconsistent and fighting a long, losing battle to establish an identity of its own.

Read Full Review >
40

The New York Times A.O. Scott

As it is, the film is more curiosity than provocation, an artifact of a faded world brought to zombie half-life by the cinematic technology of the present.

Read Full Review >
38

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

The appeal of the film version, such as it is, relates almost entirely to eye-for-an-eye, severed-limb-for-a-limb vengeance, two hours and 41 minutes of it, with just enough solemnity to make anyone who thought "The Dark Knight" was a little gassy think twice about which superhero myth THEY'RE calling gassy.

Read Full Review >
38

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

The film's storytelling and image-making lack originality and vitality. Nothing sticks to your memory unless you come in with recollections of the book.

Read Full Review >
30

New York Magazine David Edelstein

This kind of reverence kills what it seeks to preserve. The movie is embalmed.

Read Full Review >
20

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

The problem is that Snyder, following Moore, is so insanely aroused by the look of vengeance, and by the stylized application of physical power, that the film ends up twice as fascistic as the forces it wishes to lampoon.

Read Full Review >
20

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

Snyder and writers David Hayter and Alex Tse never find a reason for those unfamiliar with the graphic novel to care about any of this nonsense. And it is nonsense.

Read Full Review >
20

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Elegance isn't Zack Snyder's bag; a certain sort of impact is. Watchmen establishes him as Hollywood's reigning master of psychic suffocation.

Read Full Review >

What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this movie is 7.5 (out of 10) based on 780 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Christopher A. gave it a5:
Watchmen was overall an okay movie. I liked the action and the romance in it. The best part was how they played out Walter Kovacs (aka Rorschach). However, I did not like the pace of the movie, it could have been shorter. Plus I don't like there being bloodshed caused by torture and mutilating (which happened in the jail riot scene). I only accept it if it was in battle, like 300. Plus, this comic book film was inferior to that of most of the other comic films. They include the Spider-Man, Batman (except Batman and Robin), and the X-Men films. However, of all the comic movies I've seen, it was better than Batman and Robin, the Fantastic Four films, Elektra, and Catwoman (which I haven't seen, although I looked at its reception).

Tiberiu C gave it a0:
One hour into the movie I was still asking myself: who the fuck are these people and why should I care about them? If you want to waste your time, go watch G.I. Joe instead, it's crap, but it's many times more entertaining than this piece of sh*t.

Sean F gave it a9:
An excellent film that I believe should certainly enter into the lists of best films of all time. Having no previous knowledge of the watchmen as I had never read the graphic novels I cannot compare the two media, however, I suspect that to do so would be a disservice to the film. Having spent years and years in development hell I can’t help but feel this was the perfect time for watchmen to be released, being full of uncertainty regarding the future of the human race, 9/11 undertones, political uncertainty, and questions of compromise. There are many strengths of the film. Two stand out performances emerge from the actors playing the Comedian and especially Rorschach. The amazing thing about this statement is that these are the two characters that if anything should repulse the audience most, however in a world on the brink perhaps it’s the people who take a stand that are the most compelling. The soundtrack is amazing, the perfect example being the wonderfully executed opening credits that gives us an emotive and brilliantly condensed history of the watchmen to a Bob Dillon tune. Possibly the most important aspect of the film is the pace. Watchmen is in no rush to reach it’s end or to force it’s characters upon us, and that is certainly an advantage. Every second of the film feels like it belongs there and that the film would be a tamer, weaker animal if it weren’t. The one major criticism of this film is that the ending is poor. Not having read the graphic novels I don’t know if this is ‘true’ to them, however, the events in the last twenty minutes feel clichéd in order to wrap up the story. However, the ideas explored within these events are compelling, leading the end of watchmen to be more of a feast for the mind rather than a feast for the eyes. All in all, if the question is ‘Who’s watching the watchmen’? The answer should be ‘You’?.

Andrew H gave it an8:
This was a very good movie. It seemed a little lengthy to me, but the plot was intuitive and the action was stylized and gritty. I never read the comic books but this is a great movie to see if you were a fan of the highly stylized "300".

Evan S gave it a10:
Brilliant. I am astonished by the low scores. The source material, of course, is brilliant in its own right, but the movie manages to take the book from ink and skillyfully put it into motion. Rorschach moves in a peculiar, practiced motion that seems perfect for his disturbed persona. Adrian is swift and graceful. I would suggest that this movie is not for everyone, which perhaps explains the low scores. The movie and the graphic novel both have complicated plots that you really won't get all of the first time through, which may put off the typical comic book movie goer. On the other hand, the brutal violence and over-the-top everything may offend people who don't typically go for this kind of movie. Freaking amazing.

J L gave it a10:
Watchmen delivers a great cinematic experience with a complete helping hand towards pure escapism. Zak Snyder may not be the best director, but he sure as hell pulled out all the stops with Watchmen, and created something that any fan of the graphic novel SHOULD be proud of. Although, considering the flack the film gets, I'm deeming it the Blade Runner of our time. Panned by many, loved by many, with three different versions, and promise to be a cult favorite in the future.

Matt F gave it a6:
This 300 like superhero film is an awesome form of entertainment, though, it is not a great movie because of its weird soundtrack and its distraught and unaccomplished plot, untill a 5 minute scene at the end where if you blink you wont get the whole movie or where 30 minutes of the movie has anything to do with the plot. It has a great daily dose of action, sex, and gore, so it deserves a good solid 6.

Read more user comments >

Popular on CBS sites: College Signing Day | Olympics | Lost | iPhone | Cell Phones | Video Game Reviews | Free Music

About CBS Interactive | Jobs | Advertise

© 2010 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy (UPDATED) | Terms of Use