Sometimes an embargo is like a muzzle, and it can chafe - especially as international outlets go to press with the review that you can't publish. But I get it, and this is the game I'm playing, which is why I abide by the rules.

But sometimes you push the edge of those rules a little bit, and so I'm here with initial thoughts on Watchmen. Some of this you'll see reflected in my review, a 4100 word opus that remains sealed away. This isn't my review, not by a long shot, but I think you'll be able to tell where I'm coming from with these few paragraphs. There may be mild spoilers for those unfamiliar with the graphic novel.

If nothing else, Zack Snyder's Watchmen demands praise as an awe-inspiring achievement. Snyder has done what many considered impossible - he took Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon's seminal comic book, Watchmen, and turned it into a movie. And not just a movie; Snyder hasn't created some processional of images or a living audio book. He's made a film that feels like a living, breathing thing all its own while also being - almost completely - the book. Snyder's Watchmen captures the themes and the meanings and the characters that Moore and Gibbons created but makes them his own, turning the movie from being simply an adaptation into something that feels closer to collaboration.

Had he only done that, Snyder would have earned kudos from me. But he does more; Snyder had crafted a movie that flirts with honest to God greatness, that doesn't just capture the events of the comic but also the humanity and the emotion. It's a remarkable film, and an uncompromising one. It's the sort of movie that major studios are simply not supposed to be making now that the 1970s are over. Watchmen doesn't hold your hand and walk you through the story; in fact Snyder's movie dares the audience to keep up, demanding something much, much more than the passive viewing experience so many expect when watching even the best superhero movies.

The best sequence of the film is probably the extended ten minute Dr. Manhattan origin scene; in a self-imposed exile on Mars, the nigh-omnipotent Manhattan remembers his origin and his life, and it's here that the film showcases everything that makes it great. Scored with Philip Glass music, the scene uses strong, vibrant visual storytelling to weave the strands of Manhattan's origin and the history of the Watchmen world's superheroes together while also creating gorgeous tapestries for the viewer. Snyder's every frame is packed with information, ranging from the tiniest details that only obsessives will note to bigger things that supplement the story in a glance. And over it all is the narration of Billy Crudup, bringing a sense of disconnection as Dr. Manhattan, but not coldness. It's an arresting performance filled with grace and subtlety; on the surface Manhattan believes that he has left behind his human emotion but we can see that it's still there, hidden just under the icy blue exterior of the man who has forgotten how to be a man. And Snyder and screenwriters David Hayter and Alex Tse have the good sense to allow Alan Moore's original words to be mostly what Crudup speaks; from script to post-production, where the incredible illusion of this atomic man was created (Manhattan isn't simply a blue, glowing guy. There are... things happening inside of him, swirling reactions and hints of other cosmos just beneath his skin, which is still recognizably that of a human being), Snyder has brought together every element in nearly perfect harmony to create a scene that is stirring and moving and awesome, in the most old-fashioned sense of that word.

The other notable thing about Manhattan on Mars is how little it has to do with your preconceived notions of Zack Snyder's filmography. There's very little speed ramping (while Snyder does play with film speed in some scenes, especially flashbacks, you've probably already seen every moment in the movie that uses 300-style speed ramping) and there's almost no physical conflict. All of the action is emotional, but that doesn't mean Snyder is simply sitting a camera down and shooting people yakking. Those ads declaring Snyder to be 'the visionary director of 300' may be a bit much, but there is no question at all that Zack Snyder is a man with vision, a director who is uniquely attuned to the very visual demands of screen storytelling. And he understands the subtlety of it; going in I thought that Snyder, in his self-admitted near slavishness to the book, might try to recreate the actual visual motif from the comic book version of Dr. Manhattan's origin - a slowly falling photograph. He doesn't, which indicates a serious understanding of where the visual storytelling of comic books and motion pictures diverge. That sequence is perfect in a panel-driven medium, but in film it would be ridiculously and distractingly stylized. While Snyder opted for an overly stylized approach to 300 - based on overly stylized material - here he reigns things in, bringing style but not gimmickry, making every scene gripping to look at but not putting directorial affectations in front of storytelling. Every moment in the film looks great, but not to the point where you spend the movie marveling over how great it looks.

There's more. I wish I could go into full detail about how amazing this movie is, and how Snyder has made the cinema screen conform to Watchmen and not the other way, but I'm already skating right at the edge of what I should be sharing. Keep an eye here, though, as I'm fighting to be able to publish my rave in total.