While there are certain elements of The Watchmen that are very engaging and well-written, and Altman's take on the unfortunate duality of the War on Terror (in which there are more victims than heroes) is well structured, the two stories - of Finney and the assassin - are not sufficiently dramatically connected. The assassin's unfolding plan is dynamic and compelling; Finney's inner demons and his confrontations with Zattout are far less interesting (or, even when interesting, are not presented in a particularly dramatic fashion). More critically, since Finney is not charged with stopping the assassin, and has little if any role that aspect of the story (until the end, when all paths intersect), his efforts to gain access to the contents of Zattout's head lack any significant dramatic tension. There's the idea that Zattout knows "stuff" about al-Qaeda but never any urgency to it: it's not like there's a bomb somewhere about to go off and Finney needs to learn about it. Instead, we end up with a dedicated assassin on one side of the fence overcoming all obstacles and a rather routine interrogation on the other.

In one sense, it almost seems as if Altman himself recognizes this problem, as late in the story he uses the CIA case officer in charge of Zattout's interrogation as a "pursuer" of the assassin. Finney's storyline - while interesting and informative on certain levels - simply didn't provide the dramatic counterpoint to the assassin's story, and so Altman had to add "the pursuer" to the story because there hadn't been one before.

To my way of thinking, that is the big flaw at the heart of The Watchmen: yes, it's a stark thriller with some very compelling scenes, but the disconnect between the two principal storylines is never satisfactorily resolved. At the end, Finney is attempting to learn something about the assassin from Zattout, but it isn't clear what. And in any event, the lack of tension regarding Zattout's knowledge of al-Qaeda activities robs the story of a sense of urgency.