Night Watch

Last night I turned the TV on to watch Lost but it was mysteriously in Spanish. After failing to turn the show into English I gave up and decided to watch this odd looking Russian fantasy/thriller movie called Night Watch. Apparently this movie was the first Russian movie to get more than 2 million dollars domestically, so I figured it would have to be at least decent.

I put the movie in and after spending about ten minutes trying to get it out of the bad English voice-overs (what is up with my TV and languages? yeesh) I started watching it. It begins pretty badly with some exposition about the forces of light and darkness meeting on a bridge and battling and nobody can win so there's a truce blah blah blah. It looks corny so far. Then we fast forward closer to the present and start getting into the plot.

The plot of the movie is pretty basic. The forces of light and the forces of dark monitor each other by having the good guys police the night and the baddies policing the day. Our hero Anton is drawn into this when the good Night Watch stops a witch from performing some sort of magical abortion on Anton's wife (somehow this would get his wife back to him). Anton's magical powers awake after some stylish scuffling (including some weird doll-spider thing coming to life and someone transforming into a tiger) and we fast forward again into the present where Anton is now a vampire.

To say any more would spoil the plot as well as reveal that I really didn't follow it. This movie shouldn't be watched for the plot, it should be watched for the setting and style. It turns out that post-soviet Russia mixes really well with the dark modern fantasy setting. The mood that the setting conveys is the second-best part of the movie.

The best part of the movie is the stylish scenes. This movie was shot with barely over a 4 million dollar budget, but I really couldn't tell. We've got CGI effects of people appearing and disappearing onscreen, we've got people morphing into animals, we've got cars flipping over through the air and plenty of other cool bits. I can't really describe how cool some of the scenes are, especially the ones where the good guys enter "The Gloom," a sort of alternate reality place that didn't make much sense to me.

The final thing to note about this movie is the subtitles. I don't know why this hasn't been done before, but Night Watch uses subtitles incredibly well. When one character yells, the subtitles are big and come right out of his mouth. When another character is half-dead and struggling to get the words out, the subtitles are small and flicker. Thankfully this effect isn't overused; if anything it is underused.

In the end, you're only going to like Night Watch if you enjoy modern fantasy movies and if you don't mind getting lost in a convoluted plot. If you do like modern-fantasy stuff, this movie is going to be easy for you to enjoy. Personally, I thought it was great but it definitely isn't for everyone.