It was real. It was a genuine hitman, armed with a real gun, actually trying to kill Adrian,
The only thing about it was that Adrian set it up. He knew there would be a hit coming, but not exactly where when or how.
I pretty much agree. Adrian Veidt is pretty much Batman, or Chuck Norris: so much physically superior to a norm that a frontal assault using only a handgun is suicide.
The lobby hit was a “fake” in the sense that Veidt set it up to draw suspicion away from him. He basically told one of his employees “I need this person killed. Here’s the name in a sealed envelope. Hire a hitter, but to protect yourself, don’t read the name.” Then that employee passed the envelope to another employee (the deliveryman) who hired Roy Chess, who opened the envelope and read the target was Veidt himself, though Chess didn’t know the connection between the guy who hired him and Veidt. Possibly there was other information in the envelope describing the time and place of the hit, so Veidt wouldn’t be completely surprised by it, but in any case I see no reason to think Roy Chess wasn’t making a sincere effort to whack Veidt.
Laurie didn’t take the gun from one of Veidt’s guards - she took it from the corpse of a New York detective: chapter 12, page 8.
Yes, in the real world no human could catch a bullet. Fortunately for Veidt, he was catching the bullet in a comic book, where real world rules don’t apply. Watchmen defies physics and common sense on almost every page. The character of Dr. Manhattan alone is one great physical impossibility, from his disintegration/reintegration to his godlike omnipotence. What was the engergy source for his anti-thermodynamic miracles? How did every other superhero fight crime? How does an out of shape guy and a skinny girl beat off six young gang members? How come someone just didn’t beat the crap out of a little guy like Rorschach?
I’m really confused how you can swallow everything else in the book and this one scene is the one you strain at.
So even the greatest martial artists can’t catch a bullet. So what? They also can’t fly, or run on top of bamboo forests, or make themselves invisible, yet these are all commonly accepted norms of the genre (at least in the movies). It’s called entertainment and shouldn’t be taken so seriously.
[Hijack]
As I asked in the thread about the trailer - do you pronounce it “Veet” “Vate” or “Vight”? It was all over the place in the last thread…
[/hijack]
Heh. 
I like how this is sort of acknowledged by other characters’ reactions to him. Instead of being amazed at delighted at what he can do, people are horrified, shocked, even sickened, as if their brains can’t accept what’s in front of them. (And when his “uniform” had shrunk to the point where it was just a black thong – that was more disturbing than just being naked.)
Hurm. Joking, of course.
This is perhaps a question better suited for GD.
[sub]…of a porn site…[/sub]
I get the point you’re trying to make, but I don’t really think the example of Dr. Manhattan is relevant. In sci-fi or fantasy there are elements that are clearly not supposed to follow real world rules, and other elements that ostensibly are supposed to follow real world rules. E.g., if I’m watching Star Trek, I can suspend disbelief over the fact that they have transporters and warp drive, or even over the god-like powers of aliens like Q – but if Captain Picard starts flying around the bridge by flapping his arms, I’m going to object. Likewise, we’re clearly supposed to accept that Dr. Manhattan is less subject to real world physical laws than the other characters.
That said, I agree that even “normal” humans in comic books, like in martial arts and action movies, tend to be portrayed as somewhat superhuman. And I do think we’re meant to understand that Veidt really caught the bullet with his own abilities. Personally, I can accept this as a convention of the genre. I’m just saying it’s a different convention than the “magic – or futuristic science indistinguishable from magic – exists” convention that applies to Dr. Manhattan.
Tim314 that’s a good point about the difference between Dr. M and Ozymandias. However, it’s also true, as you note, that it’s a convention in comics that an ordinary non-powered human can train themselves to do things no real human can do, including catching bullets. If you question Ozymandias’s bullet catching abilities that opens the gate (IMO) to questioning all the implausibilities of Watchmen and of any other comic/SF/Fantasy/action movie/etc.
HSHP, most amusing.
There was blood, though, wasn’t there? So he must have done something to it…