Published: March 06, 2009 12:01 am      

Watchmen: Comic book adaption’s conclusion ‘cockamamie’ and ‘tacky’

GREENVILLE — WATCHMEN

Director Zack Snyder (“300”) presents a slew of bizarre, flawed and violent comic book crusaders in an extremely gory R-rated flick.

While we are familiar with an angst-ridden superhero like Batman, most of us don’t know about the larger- (and smaller) than-life graphic novel heroes known as the Watchmen. Based on a series of 1980’s comic books by British writer Alan Moore and illustrator Dave Gibbons, “Watchmen” tells a complicated generational story against the backdrop of possible nuclear war. The original crimefighters known as the Minutemen were a team of superheroes who foiled crime in New York City during the 1940s.

In the lengthy (nearly three hours) movie version of “Watchmen” it is 1985, and President Richard Nixon remains in office as the Cold War continues. The ominous Doomsday Clock, symbolizes the standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union and remains set at five minutes to midnight.

When former Minuteman and mercenary Eddie Blake, aka The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), falls to his death from a skyscraper, Rorschach (Academy Award nominee Jackie Earle Haley) sets out to discover who murdered The Comedian. By the way, Morgan, as a Nazi-style vigilante, and Haley, as the tortured inkblot-stained loner, are by far the most interesting and “watchable” Watchmen.

Other Watchmen include Dan Dreiberg, a semi-retired superhero whose alter ego is Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson) and Laurie Juspeczyk aka Silk Spectre (Malin Akerman), a second generation crimefighter. Her mother Sally Juspeczyk was once known as Sally Jupiter (Carla Gugino). Adrian Veidt, who as Ozymandias (Matthew Goode), calls himself “the smartest man in the world.” Then there is former scientist Jon Osterman, now a nude blue creature known as Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), the only Watchman who possesses actual supernatural powers. The large blue-toned Manhattan flits throughout the Universe.

Unfortunately, the meandering and sometimes hard to follow tales of the masked Watchmen conclude with a cockamamie resolution in very questionable taste. It seems that the denouement affords a silly solution to nuclear warfare and takes a tacky swipe at 9/11. This film’s crackpot morality could only make sense in the skewed world of a funny book.

Rated R 2 and 1/2 Stars

GOMORRAH

Forget the fictional Corleones and the Sopranos.

Based on the best-selling book by Roberto Saviano, “”Gomorrah”” follows five interconnected, extremely violent episodes concerning the Camorra crime family, the real life powerful clan in the Italian provinces of Naples and Casarta. Matteo Garrone wrote and directed the bleak, unblinking portrait of low level criminals and their wealthy mob bosses in present day Italy.

The bloodspattered film portrays the opposing factions of the Gamorra as they go to war against each other. Many innocent people in the entire terror-filled region have been killed in the crossfire. The lengthy, hard-to-watch film with up-close and personal vignettes about criminals and their victims presents a slice of horrific life.

“Gomorrah” was awarded the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival during the summer of 2008.

Rated R 3 Stars