European Films

Take a sizeable chunk of the first Matrix film and another of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, add a whiff each of Harry Potter, Star Wars, Underworld and Anne Rice’s vampire novels, add a good Russian vodka for glazing; shake violently, pour into glasses and enjoy Nochnoy dozor (Night Watch). The Russian box-office success, the first in a planned trilogy, mixes elements from all these fantasies and adds a decidedly Russian twist to the epic good-vs-evil genre. As a film on itself, Nochnoy dozor is all set-up and no pay-off, but as the first instalment in a trilogy the film shows enough promise to wait with a final verdict until the trilogy is complete.    

 

Written by Laeta Kalogradis (co-writer on Alexander) and director Timur Bekmambetov and based on the novels by Sergei Lukyanenko, Night Watch tells of the age-old battle between good and evil. In 1992 Moscow, Anton (Konstantin Khabensky) learns that he is an "Other", an apparently normal person who is actually part of another category of beings including wizards, witches and shapeshifters that live in the normal world. They serve either good -- in which case they are part of the Night Watch -- or evil, in which case they are vampires who feed on humans and are part of the Day Watch. A key ingredient of the uneasy truce between good and evil, the two watches check upon one another’s activities in both the normal world and the "semi-dark”.

 

Flash forward to twelve years later: the Night Watch, of which Anton now is part, faces a big set of problems involving a curse on Svetlana (Mariya Poroshina), and the hunt of the vampires for the 12-year-old boy Yegor (Dmitri Martynov), who could be “the Other” who could tip the balance towards either good or evil. Anton tries to resolve the pressing problems together with the other members of the night watch but he is haunted by his past actions including a murder and an attempted murder that throw a definite dark shadow over his capacity to be a member of the “good”.    

 

If this sounds like a lot of story, I have not even touched upon the crows, the witch, the aborted abortion, the owl Olga, an airplane crash, a falling screw and the revealing mirrors. Nochnoy dozor is indeed very heavy on exposition and it takes its time to make you understand how this parallel world functions. This is of course inherent in the first act of a planned trilogy, but it is also the film’s greatest weakness; there is so much explaining to do there is little time to really get into the action. The film’s last act, after the spectacular curse plot is resolved, feels mostly like an anti-climax, though it clearly paves the way for its successors.    

 

It is hard to judge Nochnoy dozor on its own, because it clearly is part of something bigger which as yet remains unseen. Technically the film is excellent; an atmosphere of darkness and dread is maintained throughout its running time and the cinematography of Sergei Trofimov is just as kinetic as all the Anglo-Saxon films that inspired the story. It has just enough creative elements to not be considered a total rip-off and Bekmambetov has an undeniable directorial flair that is only occasionally hampered by over-acting or bad mise-en-scene (such as the blatant inclusion of sponsors and video-game footage). We will have to wait for the second and probably third installment to know whether this first episode was really worth it.

 

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