It's likely that Haley will get most of the attention - Rorschach tends to hog the spotlight - but the revelation for me was Jeffrey Dean Morgan as The Comedian. There are some flaws in Snyder's film and I would say that the biggest is one that comes from the book - The Comedian essentially drops out of the narrative after the first act. In the book it wasn't that big of a deal for me, but the lack of Morgan's presence is intrinsically felt in this movie. He's huge in personality, but never feels over the top. Morgan fills the screen, and The Comedian takes on new aspects for me; there's a roguish charisma that's undeniable, and the dynamic energy of The Comedian - he's the only character who seems to ever really be into what he's doing - is palpable. But since the movie opens with his murder, the structure demands that he eventually disappear. The first act's flashbacks - the dense, information heavy act where we get an info dump on the world of Watchmen - focus mostly on The Comedian, and just like in the book when his funeral is over he moves out of the story, showing up rarely. And it's a shame; if there's any argument for changing the structure of the book it's that losing The Comedian sucks some of the air out of the film for a brief while. For Morgan this is a huge role, one that shows that he has actual movie star quality, even when raping superheroines or shooting pregnant women to death.
