Night Watch Movie Review:

Russian film history was never an area covered in the classes I took in school, and as I think back to try and remember films from Russia which have impacted me, I couldn’t even fill one fist with titles. For years films weren’t made in Russia, and now that they are being made, we hardly hear about it, but Night Watch is about to change all of that. Night Watch has already broken records all over the world, and can now be seen in The United States. Upon its release in Russia in 2004, Night Watch surpassed even Spider-Man 2 and Lord of the Ring: The Return of the King in box office, and this came from a film which only cost four million to make. It’s an incredible achievement, and I haven’t even begun to review the film yet.

Night Watch takes place in modern Moscow, but it could take place in any city. It is a story about good and evil, quite literally. For over 1000 years the world has been secretly policed by other beings, who in the technical terms are actually vampires. These “Others” make a choice upon realizing they are different. They either choose to be light or dark, but both side spends its time watching the other to make sure the rules are being followed, and humans are allowed to make their own decisions toward good or evil. The light others spend their nights watching the dark others.

This is the first in a trilogy of fantasy action films, and it takes its time to slowly allow all of the rules in this new world to come to the surface on their own through natural conversation. This means that at least the first half of the film is spent trying to understand the world we are being brought into. This makes it difficult to enjoy, but it also gives a certain silent credibility to the material as well. It is also very apparent that things have purposefully started out slow in this first film, but that they will build in the next two films. While The Matrix trilogy suffered because there was nowhere to go after the first film, this series has learned from those mistakes.

The style of the film is so scattered and somewhat nauseating, I longed for a simple steady shot. There really is nothing simple about Night Watch. Even the subtitles are so creative that I can’t help but wonder what entertained the Russian audience during moments of lull in the action. At times the visuals are a bit more than my brain could happily accept, and by the end of the film my head hurt slightly, but I was also very involved in the story. Even with my head hurting I would have sat back down and watched Day Watch if it were available, because that is how successful Night Watch was at getting me interested.

When the eternal battle between the forces of light and darkness came to a head, an uneasy truce was forged before the world was destroyed. The balance now has to be enforced by agents of light and darkness called Others, who punish those who influence the humans into taking sides. The balance however is about to end when Light Agent Anton Gorodetsky (Khabensky) realises that the prophecy of the vortex is coming to bear and the battle between Darkness and Light will begin again.

Ryan Izay

A phenomenon in Russia, the battle between good and evil comes to western audiences but will it have the same impact as it did in the motherland?

There have been many big budget Hollywood visions of the eternal fight between the forces of light and darkness since cinema began but with world cinema becoming more ambitious, better equipped and having larger budgets, we now have a new vision for this epic confrontation. Heavily influenced by western film, ‘Nightwatch’ is the first of a projected trilogy, with the first film introducing the conflict and some of the back-story.

With such a lot to introduce and establish in this first instalment, the narrative becomes muddled and quite hard to following in parts. By establishing a whole doctrine, characters and their back-stories as well as a plotline for this movie, this is information overload in parts. This torrent means the viewer can often wonder what is going on in parts as there can be two to three plotlines going on at once.

For a movie that had a very limited budget, which was probably the size of the average catering bill for a Hollywood movie, the visuals are extremely impressive. With a big nod towards the films of David Fincher, the Matrix trilogy and many a vampire movie, the visual style of the movie is very fast and filled with special effects. The darkness of the setting means that the SFX look a lot more expensive than they actually were and when you combine this with some fast editing, the filmmakers have created a look that really compliments the storyline. Problems occur however when the filmmakers go slightly overboard with this that some scenes become slightly too much to take in and can over power your visual senses as the camera moves all over the place.

‘Nightwatch’ is the start of something much bigger and this is where the film falls down slightly. As a standalone film it wouldn’t have worked but as you know that it is the first part of a larger story, you appreciate the film a little more. It is the performances that make the film all the more watchable however, with Konstantin Khabensky as Anton Gorodetsky really driving the film. With visuals far surpassing its budget and the promise of much more to come, ‘Nightwatch’ is a fine introduction to a new fantasy world and another example of how world cinema is catching up to the Hollywood machine.



Jamie Kelwick

Kazakh filmmaker Bekmambetov ambitiously brings to screen the first book in novelist Lukyanenko's otherworld trilogy, with a bracingly vivid sense of style and character. It's one of the most astonishing Russian films ever made--bewildering, abrasive, jarring and surprisingly emotional.

In 1992 Moscow, Anton (Khabensky) discovers his identity as an Other, a supernatural being who must choose between the forces of Light and Dark and take his role in the ongoing war. Twelve years later his actions as a member of the Light's Night Watch threaten to end a ceasefire; now he must track down an especially unlucky woman (Poroshina) and a young boy (Martynov) who's wandered into the fray. All while trying to maintain the truce between the leaders (Menshov and Verzhbitsky) and keeping an eye out for the promised Great Other.

There's an epic scope to the story, and Bekmambetov keeps the focus nicely on Anton, giving us visceral access to the chaotic stream of events. We feel everything because it affects Anton on such an overwhelmingly personal level. The cast makes these people into living, breathing beings--even the most outrageous characters have a vivid resonance that transcends the fantastical premise. Even Moscow looks amazingly gritty and cool, reminding us that the story is a witty, cynical, ironic metaphor for 21st century society. And it's also full of ingenious twists and details about vampires, shape-shifters, witches and the lot.

There has clearly been a huge effort to make the English-language adaptation much more interesting; subtitles are expressive and have a life of their own, refusing to just sit there like any normal Russian film. On the other hand, the film is so loud and dark and intense that it's almost impossible to keep up with it. We're constantly flung out of the narrative by convoluted explanations, jarring editing and cluttered imagery. In the end the sheer level of creativity and invention win us over. This is gob-smacking cinema! And it also brilliantly sets us up for the next two thirds of the tale.

Rich Cline

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