Night Watch ()

Once it receives its long due stateside release, the smash Russian phantasy epic Night Watch will inevitably be compared to The Matrix, most likely because of all the people running about a modern-day metropolis (wearing sunglasses at night, no less) doing fight with forces that normal folks can�t even run across. Also, the film was a box office hit and the first in a planned trilogy. But truth be told, Night Watch has much more in usual with the worlds created by fancy novelist Neil Gaiman, most especially his classic Neverwhere (filmed for British TV) about a secret domain existing precisely below the surface of everyday London. The two works share an abiding interest in the thrifty creation and delineation of complex universes of the unreal � not to mention a love of dark, umbrageous places, and large-scale struggles between honest and evil.


A sonorously narrated prologue gives us the lay of the land. In the world, there are humanity and there are Others � wHO can fade as mankind but are in effect a grab bag of seers, wizards, shape-shifters, and vampires �as wide-ranging as the stars in the sky.� The Others ar divided up (easily enough) into those that serve the Dark and those serving the Light. A long fourth dimension ago, they fought each other to a standstill in a massive conflict, and so established a truce whereby they could co-exist with each early, only they each had to essentially leave the humans alone. To secure that each side is living up to its end, they each patrol the human sphere, Dark Others on the Day Watch and Light Others on the Night Watch.


The disconcerting lead off to what we can already tell is departure to be a pretty big showdown between good and evil is the appearance of Anton Gorodetsky (Konstantin Khabensky), who�s heartsick over his ex-girlfriend being with some other man, standing at the door of a charwoman he thinks to be a witch doctor of some sort but turns out to be a Dark Other trying to influence him to do evil. At the moment of her apprehension by the Night Watch, Anton discovers he is an Other himself. And so cut to Moscow, 2004, with a hollow-eyed Anton on duty with the Night Watch, using his limited abilities of farsightedness to help find a kid world Health Organization is organism hunted by a match of Dark Other vampires. Events snowball in a mazelike fashion and soon it looks like the kid mightiness have something to do with a prophecy around an Other who will come and tip the balance between Dark and Light, smashing the armistice and returning the tribes to perpetual warfare.


Considering that Night Watch is a Russian plastic film shot for reportedly about $5 jillion, it looks absolutely fantastic. The particular effects are used slenderly but in effect, and most often for good reason (apparently it�s hard to convince several thousand crows to endlessly circle the apartment building of a cursed woman). Director Timur Bekmambetov (he also co-wrote the handwriting with Sergein Lukyaneko, world Health Organization wrote the source novel) does a-one work here, injecting just enough levity into an otherwise ebony universe, and always keeping viewers aware of the vast human beings outside the scope of this one film, so that by the type you�re impinge on with the hammer-blow finis, a substantial desire to see the sequel is pretty advantageously guaranteed.


Although one of the strongest features of the film is how simultaneously professional and yet unique-feeling it is (no Hollywood clone-work here, with the exception of too many CSI-esque particular effects shots), where Bekmambetov could actually stand to take a few hints from The Matrix and the Hollywood machine is in how to shoot a fight. Although these are fair sparse in a film that�s packed fair to the gills with suspense and dread, Bekmambetov�s idea of how to do one seems to be waving the camera about in a random style, leaving the viewer with little mind of what�s happening. There will be plenty of those anyhow, as Night Watch doesn�t slow downcast to point out road signs to those world Health Organization have to be spoon-fed every small hint � this is Brothers Grimm-type fantasy here, the forests are dark and you can easily lose your way if you�re non careful.


The DVD includes an extended close, subtitled commentary track, and a look at the upcoming sequels.


Aka Nochnoy dozor. Reviewed at the 2005 Tribeca Film Festival.




You take the first watch.