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208.58.2.83
From Russia with dread comes ``Night Watch" (2004), an inventively stylish if shaggy meld of horror and fantasy that's the most engrossing genre import since ``28 Days Later."Filmmaker Timur Bekmambetov adapts novelist Sergei Lukyanenko's story into a ``Matrix"-style techno mix of everything from ``The Lord of the Rings" and ``Star Wars" to ``Ghostbusters." The movie weaves the tale of Anton (Konstantin Khabensky) and his fellow ``Others," assorted paranormal types waging an epic, eternal light-versus-dark cold war just off normal folks' radar. Anton himself is oblivious to it all until skeptically contacting a cracked older woman who , he's heard , can help straighten out his love life; when she attempts to mystically cause his cheating-heart wife to miscarry, Anton is pulled into the urban netherworld around him, where his actions have all sorts of morally squirmy Vader-and-Luke repercussions.
The visuals and atmospherics are clearly inspired by what Hollywood is currently shipping out to the world, but Bekmambetov injects them with a rough-around-the-edges distinctiveness that avoids the feel of a cloning exercise. (The movie even gets creative with its subtitles, rendering them in bloody wisps and slow dissolves.) And as with the first ``Matrix" film, ``Night Watch" gives a sense that it's providing just a 101 intro to a world that stretches far wider than we can imagine.
Extras: The DVD's second, English-dubbed disc (for shame!) gives a coming-attractions glimpse of this world that's actually tantalizing rather than annoyingly self-promoting. (Bekmambetov's second installment, ``Day Watch," has already been released abroad.) The director's commentary is also worthwhile, in large part for its frankness: Yes, he knows he was making an American-style movie, but he was unapologetically aiming for a Russian flavor, and Russian audiences. (Fox, $27.98)
Follow Ups:
Hoping "Daywatch" is released soon in US.Not especially Matrix-y to me. A little Constantine-like maybe, but grungier and better.
Its Russian flavor is one of the best things about it.
A recommended watch for anyone interested in the off-the-beat-path movies. Not a masterpiece, but has good moments, and is actually quite entertaining, once you get past the entry point.
I saw this well over a year ago when the disc first came out. Actually, it has very little in common with Matrix, LOTR, Star Wars or Ghostbusters. Its an interesting take on Light Vs. Dark (not good V evil) with the supernatural being heavily bogged down by beurocracy and paperwork. Originally the first of three, but the ending of the sequel pretty much implies there will be no third movie. The sequel, Daywatch is much better, they clearly put more money into it, and it ties up alot of loose ends.
Jack
z
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