Release Date: March 6, 2009

(out of 4)

The Watchmen are perhaps the most reprehensible superheroes to ever hit the screen. Who are they anyway and why are the called Watchmen? The nicest one in the cast is Patrick Wilson as Dan Dreiberg, aka Nite Owl II, whom in plainclothes looks uncannily like a sweater-clad Michael Caine from the 70’s. He might be a little dull however with his nerdy glasses and highbrow, too much of a mental thinker and not a go-getter. On the other end of the superhero spectrum is Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Edward Blake, aka The Comedian which must be a deliberately ironic name. He is the meanest and most gratuitous superhero in movie history.

Before we are accustomed to the Comedian’s strengths, this worn-out and semi-retired superhero is beat to death in the opening chapter of the movie. His fellow colleagues mourn his death and vow revenge against… those faceless killers. We go back to the Comedian’s youthful heyday and learn that during the Vietnam War he impregnated a peasant woman who wanted him to be co-parent. He mortally smashes in her skull. Oh, it was accidental! He becomes impatient with rowdy peace protestors and decides to shoot them. He’s living the American Dream, he says in defense!

Worse than either of those things is a scene where he walks in on the dressing room of superhero hottie Carla Gugino as Sally Jupiter, aka Silk Spectre, who is built to look like Bettie Page the '50s dream pin-up. Nobody is supposed to dress that sexy unless they’re asking for it, the Comedian bellows. The Comedian begins to rape Silk Spectre and when she resists he smashes her face into submission. Fellow superhero Billy Crudup as Dr. Manhattan (or was it Mathew Goode as Ozymandias?) rushes in to break up the altercation. What I’m confused about is to why all these heroes in the returned present lament the death of the Comedian. They should be glad he’s dead, the S.O.B.

Other abuses to women are on display in this overblown headache of a movie. In one occasion, director Zack Snyder (“300”) opts for slow-mo shots of bullets eviscerating the flesh of a woman’s leg (she’s not introduced as anyone important in the story). There’s a name for this kind of disrespect for women in film: It’s called misogyny. Yet the film is just as racist as it is sexist as demonstrated in a scene where Dr. Manhattan (a mammoth-size blue-man superhero) blows away a bunch of blank-looking Viet Cong who are made out as dehumanized items in a shooting gallery.

No release this year could be as disappointing, as offensive, or as aggravating as “Watchmen,” even if its bold Sharper Image look might perhaps impress the gadgeteers in attendance. Nothing about the superheroes is remarkable other than Dr. Manhattan’s (Whatchamacallit?) ray-blast ability. All these characters do is pound each other with their exceptional strength. In terms of superpunch-force ability, masked Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) is the only character who dazzles with his quicksilver moves.

Fight scenes are occasionally insensible prompting one to ask: Why are they fighting? Snyder, a director into nihilistic fetishisms, dials up the bone-crunching noise on the soundtrack and cuts to close-ups of blood splattering. His other gimmick is to pan the camera to display a seemingly pointless object only to reveal blood dripping from that object, or perhaps photograph a door crack to reveal blood spilling out. Playing it all for gross laughs. Hardee-har-har.

Running at an exhausting 2 hours and 43 minutes, “Watchmen” adopts an episodic sliding-frame structure that attempts parallels to the structure of “Sin City,” a much more humane film in comparison, but the coherency is lost in all the bludgeoning and Dr. Manhattan’s blue-glow penis shots (don’t ask). Adapted from the graphic novel by Dave Gibbons originally released by DC Comics in 1986 (which might explain the story setting’s retro year), it’s not impossible to see that it is trying to create a paradigm of flawed and maladjusted superheroes in a world that seems to be dreamed up from the subconscious fusion of Edward Hopper meets Dante Alighieri. But you know what? As rich and bounteous as the budget of this film is it’s one of the least entertaining piece of crap I’ve ever seen.