Watching ‘Watchmen’ is like going on holiday. You come out of the dark cinema, step into sunny Joburg and it feels like you’ve been away for a week. ‘Watchmen’ suspends your reality and sucks you into a strangely dated, 80’s world with some awesome music.

You are bombarded by a complicated storyline, a lot of flashing information being thrown at you (billboards, TV monitors, branding, slogans and newspaper headings) and heart pounding sound. I can’t recall seeing three loose standing speakers in front of a Ster Kinekor cinema before, but you felt the sound through the floor before you heard it.

Yes, visually it is everything you’d expect from the director of ‘300’. (Luckily Watchmen is far less cheesy than ‘300’ which took itself way too seriously. ‘Watchmen’ knows it is a cartoon.) Snyder delivers haunting imagery. The first fight scene, which is fairly violent and set at a quick pace, is choreographed to the beautiful, slow moving Unforgettable by Nat King Cole.

Yes, it is gruesome in places. Limbs are broken, broken off or sawn off. There is the meat cleaver scene and lots of red, thick fake blood being squirted around. Don’t let it prevent you from seeing this film. I only covered my eyes twice and I am fairly squeamish.

The characters range from the boring Night Owl II and Ozymandias to the intriguing Silk Spectre and off the chart Rorschach.

Patrick Wilson’s performance as Night Owl is kinda boring, as are most of his past performances, except as the creep in ‘Hard Candy.’ His ‘normal’, boy next door performance added to the creep element. He was still outshone in ‘Hard Candy’ by Ellen Page (Juno) in her first award winning performance.

Malin Akerman is pretty, I know, but once you get past that she has quite a shy, but strong on screen presence.

Dr Manhattan (Billy Crudup), the naked blue man is a calm and wise, well, naked blue man throughout the film. Funny that the full frontal (wiggling) nudity is allowed, just because he is blue and shiny. Go figure.

The powerhouse performance of the film is however delivered by the relatively unknown Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach. He is eerie with his face completely covered in a white cloth mask with moving ink stains. But he is even more riveting without the mask, with his red hair, freckles and ‘average looking’ face. It’s the ones that don’t look crazy that are scary.

This film probably has some serious flaws. I could go and Google them. I don’t care though. It was fun.