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PLOT: Otherwordly (sort of) forces of good and evil in Moscow work hard to keep a balance but a woman bearing a curse opens a potential vortex -- which means big doom for many on planet Earth -- and an important little boy must choose between good and evil. It's a vampire movie. Live with it.
When Night Watch (Nochnoi Dozor) was first released in Russia, it briefly became the No. 1 box office hit of all time in that country.
Night Watch is plenty atmospheric and pretty to look at, but it's mostly a dopey vampire movie aimed at teens.
The film's huge success in Russia will at least soothe those who worry that North American youth are falling behind the rest of the world intellectually. Nyet.
Night Watch begins with an introduction to "others" and shapeshifters, etc. and their presence on the planet throughout time.
Some ancient pitched battle between the dark forces and the light forces ends in a sort of truce; call it the birth of free will, if you like.
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Then the action switches to Moscow in the 1990s. A gormless guy has engaged a psychic to get back his wife for him. The old witch/psychic/seer tells the man that his philandering wife is pregnant by another man, but before she can whip up a black-magic miscarriage, other shapeshifters burst in and stop the wicked proceedings.
Our gormless guy, Anton (Konstantin Khabensky) then discovers that he too is an "Other" with special powers to fight the forces of darkness.
The action moves forward 12 years. We meet a little boy being magically summoned by vampires who want his blood. Anton must drink some pig blood to work up his special powers and save the child.
By the way, it turns out Anton's neighbour is a vampire. They all live in an uneasy peace. It makes as much sense as the old Bugs Bunny cartoon about Sam the sheepdog and Ralph the wolf and their work-a-day skirmishes over sheep, but never mind.
Anton sees a woman on the subway who worries him. Turns out she has had a curse put on her and soon a vortex will open above her apartment block and planes will crash and a tornado will flatten Moscow and a lot of other bad Armageddon stuff will happen unless the forces of light find out who cursed her and lift the curse.
After that, an owl turns into a wiseacre woman, people slip in and out of the gloom (or is it the doom? uh, oh...) and the little boy is guarded against a desperate and vengeful blood sucker. The movie's ending is more like another beginning, as Night Watch is part one of a trilogy.
Night Watch is more of the same, only more so, for anyone who has seen The Matrix and like that. It's the future, there are vampires and sunglasses are de rigueur.
The film is slow and overly complicated, but it is saved by flashes of humour and by eye-catching cinematography. Night Watch appears to be an imitation of American filmmaking, which leads us to mention that a couple of the vampires are played by Russian rock stars. The film is in Russian with inventive subtitles.
BOTTOM LINE: More of the same, only more so. This one plays a bit on the dull side, but teens will likely lap it up.
(This film is rated 14-A)