A hailstorm of expectation notwithstanding, my hunch is that history will soon forget Watchmen, an obedient translation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s influential—some would say landmark—graphic novel (or “comic book,” to the uninitiated). It is mainly a question of timing. Moore’s deconstructed superhero saga may have seemed fresh on its release nearly a quarter of a century ago, but as enshrined by Zack Snyder (the “visionary” director of 300), it comes off as trendy, just another overblown entry in a long line of revisionist action flicks.

The story takes place in an imaginary 1985 and revolves around a second generation of freelance vigilantes known as the Watchmen. Once esteemed by the American public, they have officially retired from fighting crime. Some retain visibility as private citizens, while others recede into the margins of society. The plot kicks into gear when one of their number—the viciously misanthropic Comedian—is murdered in his apartment by an unseen assailant, indicating a conspiracy to eliminate all Watchmen. Snyder doesn’t sustain much interest in the whodunit aspect of the storyline, spending the lion’s share of the 163-minute running time probing the motivations of the rest of the costumed clan: the psychologically scarred Rorschach (who narrates in the noir style); the intellectually superior Ozymandias; the withdrawn, gadget-loving Nite Owl; the voluptuous, love-starved Silk Spectre; and most impressive of all, Dr. Manhattan, a scientist turned by a haywire experiment into a buck-naked blue demigod. When it finally becomes clear who is doing what to whom and why, the film takes on the same morally relativistic posturing that burdened The Dark Knight.

Though condensed from its knotty source (which took up 12 issues of DC Comics), Watchmen stills feels unwieldy, as if Snyder were going through a laundry list of must-haves and checking them off one by one. He seems so adamant about “getting it right” that he forgets to have a good time. As a filmmaker, he takes occasional advantage of the widescreen frame but seems too enamored with slow motion. As a storyteller, he leaves you clamoring for coherence.

Watchmen will likely not become as embedded in the public consciousness as Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies. The material is too divisive for that. Moore devotees craving nothing more than a faithful page-to-screen transfer will be thrilled by film’s subservience to the author’s political agenda, which includes a deep distrust of authority figures. Others will feel that it lacks a little something in human warmth, but may enjoy snacking on the philosophical tidbits. (Rorschach: “God didn’t make the world this way. We did.”) Many more will be disgusted by the sheer brutality on exhibition (a child murderer receiving several meat cleaver blows to the skull; a henchman’s arms being sawed off at the elbows; a rape; a murder; a nuclear holocaust). One thing seems certain: the projected earnings will ensure the survival of a depressing sub-genre: the grim graphic novel adaptation, the antiheroic hero movie.  

I was much more eager to see 12, Nikita Mikhalkov’s Russian-language remake of 12 Angry Men. Besides its three Oscar nominations and respectable ranking on the AFI’s Top 100 List, Sidney Lumet’s 1957 adaptation of Reginald Rose’s famous TV play also has the dubious distinction of being my favorite movie. Of. All. Time. Naturally, I went in with higher hopes than usual, and with a keener critical eye. It starts off unpromisingly with an artily edited opening sequence, but finds its groove when it settles into the business of the plot: the twelve jurors sequestered to a school gym to decide the fate of the Chechen boy on trial for murder; the hasty vote of “guilty” by eleven of the men; the lone juror calmly suggesting that their conviction ought to be reconsidered; the ensuing battle of wills and eventual reversal of the verdict. It loses steam when it strays too far into social commentary, but there is a livelier sense of humor than in Lumet’s original, a more democratic spreading of dialogue between the principal actors (the character previously played by Henry Fonda recedes into the background for long stretches), and an ending that goes further than Reginald Rose ever intended. A closing quote reiterates the theme: “The law is all powerful and constant, but what can be done when mercy has greater force than the law?” There is profound wisdom in the question, and it inspires a longing for more films that take such questions seriously.