Night Watch: Nochnoi Dozor

A contemporary Russian movie that you could honestly call revolutionary, more for its style than its politics.

It's also the first apocalypse-minded franchise that's earned its downbeat mood. The action, for starters, is post-Cold War, post-Chernobyl, post-perestroika. Darkness is so much a part of the Russian psyche it must be nice to see a local movie try to put its hand toward the Light.

Night Watch may be derivative of American movies, but when our ideas ooze out of the dank Russian filter they're weirder, crazier, grimier.

Night Watch represents the best in Russian special effects, a collaboration between 42 different CGI specialty firms all working in the service of a single goal: to create the nation's most visually transgressive film.

Russian-made pic displays pro technique and visual imagination on a par with, if not better than, Hollywood frighteners, but with a distinctive Slavic accent.

The film may be a mess - narratively muddled and crammed with many more vampires, shape-shifters and sorcerers than one movie can handle, but it bursts with a sick, carnivorous glee in its own fiendish games.

A fractious fiasco: whiplash camera movement set to raging blasts of death metal, a story so incoherent it made me wish I was watching, instead, the collected outtakes from Van Helsing.

Night Watch. Cracked the world in half. A real and unusual Russian blockbuster. Well-played characters and tension almost throughout the film.

I never want to be „The books are better guy“ even less when the movie is good and they did not change so much that it is an “In name only adaptation”. Lets assume I did not read the books by Sergei Lukyanenko. The movie has a dark setting in a masqueraded world scenario (Magic with all implications exists but humanity should never know because only a small minority called the Others can use it). The main setting is that in the past good and evil had a terrible stand off and made a truce because they realize that this will start their final battle that will put the world to ruins. They crate 3 organizations to keep the balance / status quo in check and made sure the normal humans don't know the truth (With modern technology they will wipe all magic users out. A sharpshooter can easily kill an unexpected wizard of any power level). The Night watch (The good guys policing the evil ones), the Daywatch (The bad guys policing the good ones) and the neutral Inquisition (Not that one) with members from both sides. The main appeal is the setting and gray morality. I consider many things the good guys do (especially the higher ups) unmoral and there are conflicts about it (more in the books than in the movies). Also the evil guys are not chaotic evil (Evil and destruction for evils sake). They are more like: We are the honest representation of humanity; We want our freedom and not be chained / enslaved by the good guys ideologies. This makes an interesting setting. For the movie: The special effects are awesome as are the setting, costumes and world building. You see the production value at each corner (Was one of the most expensive movies of all time from Russia). The actors are also good and I like their representation of the characters. The story line keeps close to the book. Then there are some changes. Warning! Cant resist complaining / Fan boy rage incoming. The changes they did are like a red rag to a bull for fans. The character relationships are quite different. A side character with not much purpose became the focus of the movie and I think some set ups should be made different or improved. But enough with the fanboy range. Overall this is a good movie that I will fully recommend for people who haven't read the books and partically recommend as alternate version for book readers. I recommend the books for their world setting, characters and philosophies about the meaning of good and evil.

ça fait penser aux Underworld mais sur un traitement plus original encore et le film sait distiller (entre les bouteilles de vodka vidées par les scénaristes) une ambiance unique, prenante, fascinante sur le thème vieux comme le monde du bien et du mal... Les forces des deux camps ont conclu une trève et se surveillent donc mutuellement parmi les humains : les "night watch" servent la lumière et surveillent les autres crevards d'en face mais d'un côté comme de l'autre, tout n'est pas aussi noir ou blanc mais plutôt en nuances de gris... car "un autre" pourrait faire basculer l'équilibre fragile ! Le scénario reste en tout cas assez tortueux, pour ne pas dire un brin décousu (cf les bouteilles) mais retombe éventuellement sur ses pieds juste à la fin. Les effets spéciaux sont de bonne facture mais la réalisation est trop souvent désordonnée, un problème récurrent et connu chez le réalisateur qui abuse d'un montage très cut tout en secouant la caméra comme un malade de Parkinson. Voilà qui rend le visionnage désagréable et met à mal un film pourtant indéniablement intéressant par son ambiance et son originalité ; c'est donc un film gâché... mais pas entièrement, Dieu ou Diable merci.

One of the major problems with sci-fi/fantasy as genre in movies is that most good made up worlds have complex rules behind them, and over the course of an entire movie length, it's difficult to explain all these rules. This is why the genre has caught on so well in novels, graphic novels, video games, but never film. In this sense, **** is ambitious. It's universe is EXTREMELY complex, and takes things from all kinds of different mythologies. Unfortunately, because the movie wants to explain everything while at the same time not getting bogged down with too much exposition, it feels like you have to pause every once in a while and seriously think about what is happening to understand it. If you leave it entirely to the movie itself to explain the plot, you'll end up confused. You'll need to remember every word that is said, and even then you'll have to think about what it all adds up to to grasp it. If you do, you'll be rewarded with a very interesting and well thought out setting and plot. The unfortunate part is that it all becomes convoluted. And at some points, it breaks some of its own rules. For these parts, even I'm at a loss. But there is a good deal of entertainment to be found here. The entire direction of the movie is stylistic. While there isn't really that much action, everything is shot in an action-packed way, and there's a strange sort of surreality to the world the film presents. A lot of the time, it's cool. But sometimes, the stylistic nature of the movie is so over-the-top that it becomes silly, like when Dark Others, upon using a lot of power, will suddenly start screaming while twitching like they're having a seizure. Maybe it was supposed to be weird or disturbing. It ended up laughable. Another gripe is the ending. I know this is the first movie in a trilogy, but the ending feels so awkward, rushed, and haphazardly crafted that it feels like it needed a subplot or two removed (one of the many) to get the movie a little bit more time to explain it. Overall, however, **** is fairly entertaining. If you're a horror or urban fantasy fan, this movie may be up your alley, and for better or worse, you'll never see anything like it.

Russian film where the the Forces of Light battle the Forces of Dark in a nutshell. Vampires, decent effects & general all round mayhem. Borrowing from Star Wars, LOTR & the Matrix to name a few, it is very slick & well directed. I can see why it is considered a "cult" classic but really not my thing at all.