By Martin “The Baron” Russmier
Howdy
folks! Welcome to another edition of The Baron’s Film Korner. I am, of
course, The Baron (AKA Martin Russmier), and I will be your host for
today’s festivities. The film I will be discussing today is Zach
Schnieder’s The Watchman.
This is obviously a really popular film, and I’m going to assume that
all of my readers have already seen it, so consider this a SPOILER WARNING SIGNAL! But if you didn’t see The Watchman already, what are you waiting for!? Drop what you’re doing and go see it post-haste!

This
will be part 1 of my review, in which I’ll go through each of the
characters one by one, and one at a time, describing their strengths
and weaknesses. Enjoy!

The Watchman

Let’s
dig into the supercharacters this deeply-plotted thriller. The movie
begins by introducing us to the Watchman himself. He roams the dark
city streets (of whatever crazyed-out city this movie takes place in)
wearing an ink blot mask and reigning terrors down upon the evildoers
he sees.

The actor who plays the watchman is supposedly a pretty
good actor, but the only other movie I’ve seen him in was this movie
called Little Children (a
chick-flik which my large, brassy, and beautiful girlfriend Tina forced
me to watch one night), where he plays a child raper who lives with his
mother. This movie was literally too strange for words. Let’s just say
that by the end of the film, this “raper” character is swinging on a
swing in the park at night and wearing a bloody diaper because he cut
off his own man-junk with a knife (spoiler warnings) while Rose from Titantic
looks on horror. What the heck is that all about? Now I’ll never be
able to watch my fav lovers of all time (Jack & Rose in Titantic) without thinking about some kid-toucher sawing off his woo-woo. Oh brother!

The Night Owl (AKA The Owl)

The
owl is the one character in the film I can relate to on a basic level.
He’s smart, caring, and has the boyish good looks to go along with it.
When I looked him up for this article, I saw that the owl was played by
someone named Pat Wilson. I don’t know who that is.

Anyhow,
whoever this guy is, he does a servistable job of the whole deal, but I
still think they should’ve tapped my main man hip-hop rapper Will Smith
for the role. Would it hurt these films to feature coloreds as heroes
once and a while? Talk about living in the stone ages…

Doctor Manhattan

This
is the character most of you will be familiar with from the trailer.
This glowing blue man was given superpowers by a fatal dose of
radiation he received while working in a power plant of some sort. His
powers include the ability to see the future, stop bullets, give people
cancer, and build machines by floating the pieces around the room. He
can also create three copies of himself and then make them “have love”
to a woman while he works on a project in the other room.

It
also doesn’t hurt this film’s sex appeal that the good doctor is played
by scrumptious black irish actor Billy Crudup (star of such films as Bloody Monday
and I BELIEVE that one movie british about the dancing kid whose father
thinks he is gay). I have to admit: I’m about as manly and heterosexual
as they come, but every time I saw mr. Crudups little dangler there on
the screen (doctor manhattan wears no pants) my heart would skip a beat
and I would clutch Tina’s hand just that much tighter.

Wow.

The Silk Scepter

There isn’t too much to say about the silk
scepter, other than that she’s supposed to be pretty good-looking.
Personally, I prefer my women to fill out ALL parts of a spandex
jumpsuit (not just the boob section) so I wasn’t really to sweet on
this little lady.

But, I guess she does what she’s supposed to do,
provides some thrills and spills so all the slobbering little fratboys
out there can get their jolly-jollies and pop pup tents in their seats.

Grow up, you toads.

The Comedian

There
isn’t anything funny about this character (which is ironic seeing as he
is called the comedian) who is played by actor Robert Downing Junior
(of Iron Man fame), the
comedian is a rough and tumble cattleman type, just without the ten
gallon hat. He can draw a gun faster than you can shout “beetleborgs!”
and he huffs and puffs and chomps away at his cigar all day, until the
cows come home to roost.

Yes, the comedian is one tough cookie,
but he isn’t exactly a femenist. A few of his scenes in this movie
really brought my stomach to a boil. The first is where he murders a
Chinawoman in a bar during the Vietnam war. She enters the bar, offers
to buy him a drink, and then informs him that she’s pregnant. The baby
is his, obviously. So instead of chatting it out with this young woman,
what does he do? He murders her by shooting her in the head until she
dies.

Although this is supposed to be a pretty serious scene in
the film, I couldn’t help but quip when she dropped to the ground. I
said: “Nice on buddy, you just killed your own kid!” Needless to say,
this caused my friend Sam and I to break down laughing/crying during
the next 5 minutes of the film. And to all the fuddy-duddies who
shushed us: Last time I checked it a was a free country. My grandfather
didn’t die in Korea so his grandson would be harassed in a movie
theater by some corn shucking hayseeds in the front row of the movie
theater.

Ozymandias

Finally we come to
ozymandias. Frankly I don’t have much to say about this character. His
appearance in this film puzzles me a great deal. He only shows up in
the first half of the movie to do a couple of scenes in his office
tower. Then he disappears, never to be seen again. What in tarnation is
this all about!?

I certainly would have killed to see how the character
of this fascinating (and dreamy!) blonde hottie plays out, but
apparently the Zack Snyders didn’t find it necessary to finish all the
plots he started.

That’s all I’ve got for the first
round of my Watchman extravaganza, stay tuned to this site for my
second portion, in which I discuss the plot of the movie in greater
detail.

Baron, out.