Night Watch: AFFF 2005
Years ago, the forces of Light and Dark signed a treaty, to form a night watch! Anton a young Russian belongs to the Night Watch and hunts down vampires that have broken the treaty. When Anton finds out about an old prophecy to raise a powerful “Other” it’s time to act.
Night Watch could be called Russia’s first blockbuster and is based on the best-selling sci-fi novels of Sergei Lukyanenko, entitled Night Watch, Day Watch and Dusk Watch. Director Timur Bekmambetov has made a wonderfully atmospheric, gripping and engaging movie that moves along at breakneck speed, sweeping everything along that comes in its path. With a scheduled American remake and Day Watch & Dusk Watch in production, it seems like we have another powerful fantasy trilogy in the making.
After The screening I thought the movie was OK enough for a decent release. Although the story is sometimes confusing and the movie is told with a comic book feel, it’s still worth to catch it. The comic book approach is way too cool. A nice scene and very comic related is where the truck “jumps” over the head of a friend who accidentally stands in the middle of the road or in the opening scenes where we face a shape shifter at work.
This one scene is filmed like many of the matrix fight sequences and does relate visually very much to this movie.
Many aspects of the story get lost in the translation from book to movie and this makes it hard to catch the full intensity of the movie. At moments this is really confusing at sometimes your thoughts wonder off to different places. Another disturbing thing is the fact that this modern vampire theme isn’t fully used & could be worked out more graphically. The 'Dark Side' does not indulge into much bloodsucking & there are hardly any 'teeth in the neck' scenes in the movie. But then again it’s a story from the 'Night Watch' point of view and not from the vampires view.
The end of the movie is to my opinion somewhat forced. After a live and death fight with something that resembles a light sabre and with young guy that is turning his back to the good side only to join forces with the dark side, this is all to familiar to me and I really hope that the sequel doesn’t come up with these genre clichés and star wars rip offs.
However I enjoyed the movie and would give it a rate that holds something between good and very good only because it’s done in Russia with a minimal of resources and also because somehow it’s quite refreshing to know that a new counterweight for the many US blockbusters can be found nearby.