Review: Night Watch

Timur Bekmambetov’s Night Watch, a blockbuster of previously unseen proportions in its native Russia, desperately wants to be overwhelming. Instead, with its endless special effects, blinding cutting, and buckets of blood, the film is a visual representation of attention deficit disorder, confusing and distracting but neither interesting nor lasting.

Like the series of novels by Sergei Lukyanenko on which it is based, Night Watch is set in a modern day Moscow in which humanity unknowingly lives alongside the Others, a supernatural group made up of assorted vampires, sorcerers, and shape-shifters. From the beginning of their existence, the Others have been divided into Light and Dark Ones, two opposing groups who, when the film’s prequel ends, are coexisting under an uneasy truce. Under the terms of the truce, the forces of light rule the day, while the forces of dark control the night. To ensure the peace remains unbroken, a representative group from each side patrols and regulates the opposite domain: for the Light, this group is known as the Night Watch.
Anton (Konstantin Khabensky), the movie’s protagonist, is a fairly new officer in Night Watch, and his early mission to rescue a young boy from two eager Dark Others becomes one of the twin poles around which the film turns. The boy (Yegor, played with abundant blankness by Dima Martynov) is quickly revealed be an Other with still undiscovered powers, and his choice between Light and Dark becomes crucial to the battle between the forces. The film’s other pole is a bland, tired-looking woman named Svetlana (the wildly overacting Mariya Poroshina), around whom Anton is shocked to see a rather intimidating sounding “vortex of evil.” Svetlana, as a result of an Other’s curse, has become the latest incarnation of the Virgin of Byzantium, a figure so horribly unlucky that she was the source of all darkness in the world earliest days. According to Night Watch leader Geser (Oscar-winning director Vladimir Menshov in a wonderfully warm performance), the Virgin’s reappearance “heralds the last battle” between Light and Dark. If her curse is not lifted within 48 hours, an unspeakable catastrophe (one that, apparently, takes the form of a tornado of crows) will strike Moscow.

Any plot summary of Night Watch, however, inevitably erases one of the film’s primary traits: its staggeringly confusing nature. Without having read Lukyanenko’s books, it’s nearly impossible to follow the story and to know what, exactly, is happening on screen. For example, according to web sources, the Gloom is a crucial, carefully-defined element of the novels. In the movie, however, it’s a dim, Others-only place that needs to be “distracted” and periodically fed blood, and is inexplicably full of mosquitoes. It’s never clear why anyone goes there, or why it is dangerous to linger within.

Because it’s never quite clear what’s happening, Bekmambetov’s film is forced to rely on its adrenaline-laced visuals to keep the viewer engaged, a technique that has worked quite well for American vampire films like Blade and Underworld. Here, however, the film is so fragmented and the atmosphere so uneven that even the adrenaline fails to last. Though the movie is packed with western-style chase scenes and fights - complete with the requisite loud, aggressive music - they are set apart as showcase pieces and don’t feel part of the film as a whole. As a result, any emotional ties we have built up with the characters are lost when the Bekmambetov heads off into another impressive (and impressive they are - with a budget of around $4 million, he was able to integrate nearly 30 minutes of ambitious special effects into his not quite two hour film) effects extravaganza.

In addition, any connection the viewer manages to maintain with the film’s characters falls apart the moment they are placed in danger, because the editing is suddenly so rapid that it’s nearly impossible to see who is doing what to whom. On one hand, this frantic pacing helps compensate for the movie’s small budget: if you’re showing a sword fight from dozen of different angles, you don’t need to show the impact of the swords, and thus don’t need to develop those effects. On the other hand, though, it doesn’t take most viewers long to realize what’s going on, and their exasperation with the technique is likely to turn into frustration with the film and its director, and eject them even more fully from the world he is laboring to create.

Finally, despite the fact that the film’s press materials are laden with glowing references to how fully and deeply Bekmambetov examines his characters, there is very little depth in evidence on screen. Apart from Menchov, who invests his small role as Geser with a pleasing combination of weariness and indomitability, most of the actors seem to be doing the best they can with very simple roles. Despite the rather absurd addition of a lost child for Anton, the character is most interesting when he stands silently in the subway. Otherwise, he’s a figure created by his actions, whose personality we are supposed to invent because the movie tells us he has one but fails to provide it. The same is true of most of the other central characters, from the cursed Svetlana to Zavulon, the leader of the Dark Ones, none of whom comes across as anything approaching three-dimensional.

That said, however, there are some wonderful things about Night Watch, both of them stemming from the film’s look. Firstly, Bekmambetov and his casting director did a wonderful job in creating distinct types for the forces of Light and Dark. Those in the former camp are, visually speaking, normal, hard-working, traditional Russians. They’re often overweight, drive old cars, work demanding jobs, and fight every day for simple survival. The Dark, on the other hand, are modern Russian gangsters: young, brash, flush with new money, and more interested in enjoying themselves than thinking about the future. Whether this approach came from the book or from the director’s own mind, it’s a brilliant touch that gives the film a much-needed sense of reality.

The film’s interiors, meanwhile, are stunning. Whether it’s Yegor’s mother’s cleanly modern apartment or Svetlana’s cluttered, old-world space, each is invested with its own distinct personality. Svetlana’s small apartment, for example, is full of outrageous wallpapers, including a lush forest and an dark, diamond-based pattern, all of which are perfectly set off by her painfully dated, elaborate clothing. When she sits in front of the diamond wallpaper, drinking tea in an awful robe, the visual combination is exquisitely awkward, recalling no less a talent than Douglas Sirk in its wonderful self-consciousness.

Despite these touches, however, Night Watch disappoints. While it’s fascinating to watch the film because of its revitalizing effect on the Russian film industry, it ultimately fails to live up to its own genre expectations, and leaves the viewer behind over and over again while it indulges in special-effects folly. There is, however, a lot of potential here, and Bekmambetov’s passion for filmmaking is abundantly clear - one hopes Day Watch, his box office-shattering sequel, is a more focused, mature piece of work.