NIGHT WATCH -- 2004, Russia. Starring Konstantin Khabensky, Vladimir Menshov, Valeri Zolotukhin, Mariya Poroshina, Galina Tyunina , Yuri Kutsenko, Aleksei Chadov, Zhanna Friske, Ilya Lagutenko, Viktor Verzhbitsky , Rimma Markova, Mariya Mironova, Aleksei Maklakov, Aleksandr Samojlenko, Dmitry Martynov. Directed by Timur Bekmambetov. Written by Timur Bekmambetov, Sergei Lukyanenko, and Vladimir Vasiliev. Buy it Now from Amazon.com.

DAY WATCH -- 2006, Russia. Starring Konstantin Khabensky, Vladimir Menshov, Valeri Zolotukhin, Mariya Poroshina, Galina Tyunina, Yuri Kutsenko, Aleksei Chadov, Zhanna Friske, Ilya Lagutenko, Viktor Verzhbitsky, Rimma Markova, Mariya Mironova, Aleksei Maklakov, Aleksandr Samojlenko, Dmitry Martynov. Directed by Timur Bekmambetov. Written by Timur Bekmambetov, Sergei Lukyanenko, and Vladimir Vasiliev.

After I finished watching the Russian fantasy-horror film (though there is very little that is scary about it, unless you are scared of vampires in velour track suits, which, come to think of it, I am) Night Watch, I had to sit and ponder what I'd just seen for a few minutes before deciding that I needed to watch it again. I usually only do this if a movie is excessively enjoyable or excessively incomprehensible. In the case of the latter, I usually rewatch it for two main reasons: 1) to see if the movie really is that convoluted and disjointed, or was I just not paying attention, and 2) I have a massive intellectual ego and utterly refuse to accept that any film, no matter how opaque, could possibly escape my vast and nigh supernatural capacity for comprehension. Or, you know, something like that (my grades from assorted physics classes I've taken over the decades will attest to the true might of my powers of comprehension).

In the case of Night Watch, I was definitely watching again because I was confused. A second viewing and some quick readings of assorted summaries cleared things up for me pretty well, but at the end of it all, the experience of watching Night Watch was very close to the experience I had watching Kenji Fukasaku's Battles without Honor and Humanity for the first time. There is simply so much mythology, such a lengthy back story, and so many characters that trying to keep track of everything without a tally sheet can make your head spin. Beneath all the confusion and blurred vision it induces, however, is a fairly easy-to-follow core that is worth burrowing toward. Night Watch isn't a masterpiece, and it isn't the grand fantasy epic much of the marketing material made it out to be. It is crammed with too many camera tricks and it is indeed hard work to keep tabs on what the hell is going on. Despite all that, Night Watch, like Battles without Honor and Humanity, is worth the effort -- though you may not even realize this until you've watched the sequel, Day Watch, which is a much more coherent film than manages to make the first film a lot more comprehensible. I'm reviewing them both here as a single film, because that's pretty much what they are.

I'm late on the wagon of discussing these films, so forgive me if the history behind them is old hat to you. For those of you out there, however, who are like me and lag behind trends and what's hot by a year or two, here's the superficial lay of the land. Night Watch (aka Nochnoy Dozor) is the first part of a trilogy, followed by Day Watch (Dnevnoy Dozor) and whatever the heck the third film is going to be called. Dusk Watch or something. I think people were guessing that, but then, they were also insisting that George Romero's fourth zombie film was going to be called Dusk of the Dead, and look how that turned out for them. But I guess it makes more sense than most other times of the day. No one is really going to flock to see George Romero's Afternoon of the Dead or Timur Bekmambatov's Lunch Hour Watch.

The movies were pre-ordained, in a way, as massive cult hits, and a campaign touting them as such seemed to hit the streets before the first film had even been released. Whatever they did worked, I reckon, because Night Watch became the highest grossing movie in Russian cinema history -- though I would preface that claim by freely stating that I have no idea what it takes to become the highest grossing film in Russian cinema history, and I'm not well-versed enough in modern Russian cinema to say whether Night Watch has much competition. Besides, it's not like "highest-grossing" translates to "good," even in Russia (the Russian word for "good" is pronounced "vodka"). After all, aren't those crappy Star Wars prequels some of the highest grossing films in America? And I'm pretty sure that if you discount the films of Miyazaki, the highest grossing film in Japanese history is Streets of Fire. Actually, that last one is OK. Any movie that gives us Northern Soul, Diane Lane, and Willem Dafoe in trash bag overalls is all right in my book.

All I've seen of Russian movies are those crazy fantasy films from the 1960s where big guys beat up wind demons or dudes tear around undersea kingdoms atop giant seahorses, which were pretty fun but probably not enduring blockbusters in the minds of modern Russian youths. Night Watch, on the other hand, is crammed full of visual gimmicks, grungy location work, and blaring Russian techno and metal music. So the kids can dig it.

And so can I, though like I said, it took me a while, even with my tolerance for blaring Russian techno and metal music, which I have acquired courtesy of living in a largely Russian neighborhood for the past few years. I mean, I can't exactly complain. My people gave the world haggis and bagpipe music.

Night Watch begins with an epic battle between the medieval forces of light and dark (which, as we'll learn through this film, don't necessarily correlate with good and evil), during which the two forces emerge as evenly matched. Faced either with mutual extinction or sorting the whole thing out, the general of light, Lord Geser (Vladimir Menshov), and the general of darkness, Zavulon (Viktor Verzhibitsky), momentarily halt time and work out the details of a truce that ends up looking a lot like your typical Russian (or any other country, for that matter) bureaucracy. The war will stop. Light and dark will not prey upon one another, and the forces of darkness -- who are somewhat vampiric in nature (though they don't necessarily follow all those rules about sunlight and whatnot) -- have to be licensed and can only feed on humans during certain previously agreed-upon periods of time. Exactly what the limitations the forces of light have placed upon them is never really made clear (at least to me), nor is the exact supernatural nature of the Light Others.

To keep track of each other, two regulatory watchdog groups are formed: the Night Watch is comprised of Light Others ("Others" being the generic term for these supernatural beings who walk among us dopey, oblivious mortals) and polices the Dark Others. Conversely, the Day Watch is made up of Dark Others and keeps an eye on the Light Others, though once again, exactly what it is the Day Watch does isn't really explained. The duties of the Night Watch are pretty easy to understand: if a Dark Other gets out of line, starts killing humans during non-approved times, stuff like that, the Night Watch deals out the justice.

Both sides, however, are waiting around for a prophesized (yeah, one of those again) Other who will be more powerful even than the two immortal generals. Unlike most prophecies, however, this one isn't really all that specific. They know this uber-Other is coming, but they don't know when, and it would seem that whether he tips the scales in favor of light or dark is subject purely to his freedom of choice.

Night Watch is split into two distinct plots that mingle together for the finale but don't make clear sense as being parts of the same story until Day Watch. The first plot is about a member of the Night Watch named Anton (Konstantin Khabensky), who is still something of a novice at his job and who may also be the father of the --and I shudder to use this phrase -- chosen one. We first meet Anton when he approaches a witch and asks her to cast a spell that will return his ex-wife to him (an act that will have severe consequences later on). He gets caught in the middle of things when the Night Watch show sup to bust the woman for illegally practicing magic, and not knowing what else to do with the poor guy, they induct Anton into the Night Watch.

The second plot is about a young woman named Svetlana (Mariya Poroshina) who seems to be the focal point of a nexus of bad luck that manifests itself as a swirling funnel cloud of black birds and dust and threatens to destroy, at the very least, a good portion of Moscow. Neither of these ideas are particularly ground-breaking, and I didn't expect to like Night Watch that much since I have had my fill of stories about chosen ones and the eternal struggle between light and dark. However, Night Watch doesn't seem overly concerned with fulfilling all the hoary old clichés of these types of films, just as it seems uninterested in playing to what has become the modern image of the vampire as a sort of moping, soul-searching goth rocker with a silly made-up medieval sounding name.

Instead, these vampires, shapeshifters, seers, witches, psychics, and whatever the Day watch people are, are strictly working class slobs. Rather than flashy cars, they drive utility trucks They pound vodka, wear sweatpants, and go about their supernatural wonderworld with a surly workmanlike weariness. I'm reminded in many ways of the similar approach to the fantastic that was taken by Hellboy. For humans, this is an incredible world of immortals, vampires, magic, space warping, and other mind-blowing stuff. For the people engaged with it on a daily basis, it's just the usual grind.

The entire cast plays the film perfectly, and they actually act rather than taking the standard American approach, which is to mumble and furrow your brow. Despite the convoluted nature of the film and the tendency it has to lose track of itself and, as a result, lose the viewer, it's still very easy to believe that each of these characters is an actual person. Working on the script, Timur Bekmambetov may fail to connect the dots of the plot itself, but he does manage to create some really likeable and believable characters, which alone makes Night Watch better than most contemporary horror, science fiction, and fantasy films. Viewers can sympathize with Anton in much the same way they might sympathize with Bunta Sugawara's character in Battles without Honor and Humanity. Like him, we're sort of thrown into the middle of a very long, complicated story, and we don't always have a clear idea of what the hell is going on. Like them, we are everyday Joes thrust into a situation that is way over our heads.

Equally effective is the characterization of Zavulon, the leader of the Darks, who at this point we can't even peg as a villain. He's just on the other side, but there's not much he does that is evil. He wants to control the chosen one, but so do the Lights. Oddly, he looks a lot to me like Peter Stormare, the guy who played Satan in the much maligned Constantine film (which I actually rather liked), and his character is very similar to Stormare's portrayal of big sugardaddy Lucifer. I'd also compare him to Sam Hans, the flamboyant and completely likeable villain in the otherwise hilariously awful Indian film, Asambav -- but that may be as much for characterization as it is for the simple reason that both he and Zavulon seem to have a preference for gaudy, silk shirts.

Where the script falls apart, but not in a way that ruins the film for me, is in the plot itself, which as I think I've already communicated is rather on the convoluted side. based on a novel by the same name, Bekmambetov tried to cram an entire mythology into his film, and in an attempt to keep it packed to the gills with weird stuff, we never get a full handle on just what the heck is happening. Supernatural powers come out of the blue and don't conform to any previously established "rules" or roles. some characters are sort of vampires, but they don't have the same weaknesses of vampires, just as they have a lot of powers one doesn't normally attribute to vampires. The author of the novels also had a hand in adapting his own work for the screen, which almost never goes well. Fiction authors tend to either be too familiar with their own characters, and thus leave out huge chunks of information that may be known to them or to readers but not to filmgoers, or they are so in love with their own creation (writing a novel is difficult work, after all), that they can't bear to cut anything out, resulting in piles of exposition and things thats imply don't work in a movie. Night Watch, curiously, seems to suffer from both of these afflictions.

And even after finishing Day Watch (also based on a novel, I still have no idea what the Lights are or why Anton is sometimes a vampire. There's a whole subplot spent on an airliner that is threatened with disaster as a result of Svetlana's bad mojo tornado, but that never ends up having much to do with anything and is ultimately resolved with very little more than a throwaway line to the effect of, "Oh, that airplane ended up being OK." Luckily, decent characters and a heady sense of delirium make it easy to surrender to the peculiarities of the story and just roll with it.

What Night Watch gets the most attention for is its visual style, which is derived from just about every flashy movie of the past ten years. Bekmambetov has never seen a weird editing, camera, or CGI trick he didn't like, and he tried to cram as many of them as possible into the film. Sometimes it works well, other times less so, and if the overall style of the film contributes to the lack of cohesion in the narrative, it also serves to keep you interested even when you've lost track of what is going on. Normally, I am put off by over-directed, hyper-stylized films that use visuals and computer animation tricks to compensate for being lousy in every other way. Looking good is no longer enough, because any movie these days can achieve similar results, and many have but have also not forgotten to include a compelling narrative. Night Watch is odd in that it wallows in gratuitous stylization, yet it never got irritating for me. I have no real explanation for why that is the case. It may be that the strength of the characters and the overall weirdness of what was going on was enough to make me overlook the visual overkill. Instead of being tedious and self-indulgent, Night Watch ends up being fun and self-indulgent.

Some of the effects are better realized than others, but I don't think there was ever a concerted effort to make all the effects completely believable. The cruder ones add rather than detract to the overall otherworldly feel of the movie, and even though they are layered on thicker than the sugary icing of a supermarket birthday cake, the effects all work together to warp reality rather than create an entirely new universe. The Moscow of Night Watch is recognizable as the real world. A grubby, dreary, post-Communist real world full of cinderblock tenements, but reality never the less. By plopping his effects smack down in the middle of this very real looking world, Bekmambetov succeeds in making his movie even more effective. This is our world -- but with something not quite right about it.

Day Watch picks up almost immediately where Night Watch ends, and manages to retain the first films strengths while noticeably improving upon the weaknesses. Day Watch has much more focused, easy to follow narrative: the chosen one has been found, and he's made his choice. Now it's up to one side to retain him and the other side to convince him to jump ship. Meanwhile, it turns out that there might be more to Svetlana and her powers (she is a junior Night Watch member by this second film) that make her a potential rival for the chosen one -- or perhaps everyone is wrong, and she is the chosen one. I don't know if that was the impression I was supposed to get, but I did. Day Watch also introduces us to the Chalk of Fate, easily one of the least impressive all-powerful relics of all time.

Although I ended up quite liking Night Watch, everything about Day Watch is even better. Anton is further developed as a character, and even gets to swap bodies with his female partner when he is set up for the murder of one of the Darks. This act ends up serving as the impetus for Zavulon attempting to goad the Night Watch into breaking the long-standing truce, so that he can finally start the war up again. But the real stand-out character for me this time around was Alisa, played by Russian pop star and all around scantily-clad media icon Zhanna Friske. From what I hear, she had a twenty-minute long sex scene (there is very little -- if any -- nudity in either film, by the way) that was cut from the final product, which upset both her and me. Shame on you, Timur Bekmambetov. You could have at least included it as an extra on the DVD. Not that I would have watched it or anything.

Alisa emerges as the strongest character in the second film, though that could be mostly because she dresses fabulous, has a cool spiky haircut with devil horns, and drives a sports car up the side of a building. In a fantasy world inhabited by vampires in their boxers and old man tank top undershirts, she's the flashy one. She's also a great character: Zavulon's right-hand, so to speak, committed to the Dark cause, but beginning to think that maybe Zavulon is getting a little out of control in his efforts to frame Anton and spark the breaking of the peace treaty. I have no idea what her reputation is like in Mother Russia, but she's wonderful in this movie. Plus, you know, she looks damn good in that slinky cocktail dress she puts on for the finale.

Speaking of which, if there's one place where Night Watch trumps Day Watch, it's in the finale. Night Watch wraps up with a showdown atop a high rise apartment building surrounded by swirling tornadoes of birds and is highlighted by Zavulon ripping out his own spine to use as a sword. By contrast, Day Watch has a more subdued finale, but remember -- that's only in comparison to a guy ripping out his own spine to use as a sword. Only on that scale could a yo-yo that destroys half of Moscow be considered "subdued."

Both films are well worth watching, and if the herky-jerky storytelling of night watch puts you off, I would still urge you to give Day Watch a try. It makes things much easier to understand. I have absolutely no idea where the series goes from day Watch, which ends in a way that would seem to wrap the story up. Having not read the books by Sergei Lukyanenko and Vladimir Vasiliev, I don't know where the story goes from here (nor do I know how closely the films resemble the books, or if everything would make perfect sense if only I'd read the novels), but I'm excited to find out. Although I was puzzled, perhaps even frustrated at first, while watching Night Watch, by the end of Day Watch I was feeling pretty damn good about Bekmambetov's series. It's imaginative, unconventional, and despite the fact that the dazzle and flash may overshadow things, it's as ambitious storywise as it is visually. Given the sordid state of modern horror, fantasy, and science fiction films, it's great to see a film that combines all three into such a dizzying but enjoyable celebration of filmmaking.

Labels: Country: Russia, Fantasy, Horror: Creepy Cults, Horror: Vampires, Year: 2004, Year: 2006