Beneath the visual candy of Watchmen lies a complex web of ideas and questions, the predominant one being the age-old question: Does the end justify the means? Is it right or wrong to sacrifice the lives of a few for the sake of many?

The film also touches on the savage nature of the human heart. One character even comments that he has realised that God didn't make the world the way it is—we did. Unfortunately though, these underlying themes are lost in the dizzying effects and haphazard storyline.

Watchmen is based on the 1986 graphic novel of the same name and centres on a group of self-appointed superheroes (with the exception of Dr. Manhattan who is indeed a regular "scientific experiment gone wrong" kind of superhero). The group has been outlawed as vigilantes and no longer fight crime. When one of their number is murdered in the stunning opening sequence, however, they are brought back together to fight a common enemy.

This is the third feature from director Zack Snyder who most recently gave us the stylised action flick, 300. It's no surprise then that this is also a highly stylised visual-effects-laden movie. And it does look good. The cinematography and production design are fantastic and Snyder's regular use of super-slow-motion gives it that element of "we really are watching a graphic novel." But that's about all this film has going for it. Now, I must confess that I haven't actually read the source material, so maybe a fan of the novel would appreciate this film more, but for me the story is simply all over the place.

The first 90 minutes of the film is largely dedicated to setting up the characters and the fact that we are in an alternate version of 1985. Richard Nixon is still president, nuclear war with Russia is an almost certainty, and society seems to have descended into chaos. But the problem is, despite Snyder spending so much time introducing and developing the characters and the story, we care about neither. Perhaps this is because the Watchmen are not your regular superheroes; perhaps they are just not likable characters. Or perhaps it is because the plot does not flow. Rather than being a nice cohesive story, it is more a collection of different scenes, some which are quite good, that just don't seem to flow into each other and therefore make the film difficult to get into.

Watchmen also contains some pretty heavy violence and a couple of sex scenes that are obviously present in the graphic novel and have therefore made their way to the screen. Now, I'm not opposed to violence or sex scenes in movies, provided that they are handled well and serve the overall purpose of the story. But the majority of such scenes in this film do not. It seems that the gratuitous violence and sex is more or less just there for shock value, something to get teenage guys talking.

And so despite the handful of great scenes that exist in the film, overall it falls flat. At 2 hours and 40 minutes it is also painstakingly long. I must have checked my watch about 3 or 4 times during the film, wondering when the action was going to start, waiting for the film to move to the next plot point. But every time the pace seemed to pick up, a completely different scene would be thrown in and all that momentum was lost. I was really looking forward to seeing this, based on the buzz surrounding the film and Snyder's previous effort with 300 which I thoroughly enjoyed. But in this case, does the end film justify the $100 million that was spent bringing it to the screen? Sadly, no.

Will people see Watchmen and question the nature of the human heart? Will people wonder whether it is God who has made the world the way it is, or us? Will people talk about the philosophical and ethical dilemma of whether it's right or wrong to sacrifice a few lives for the sake of many? I'd like to think so. For the mainstream audience however, a more likely scenario is that this forgettable film and its themes and ideas will be simply that, forgotten.