"A Russian twist on the Hollywood sci-fi saga"

Films/DVD Asylum

Movies from comedy to drama to your favorite Hollyweird Star.

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)

http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/articles/2006/06/18/dvd_report/ (Open in New Window)

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Topic - "A Russian twist on the Hollywood sci-fi saga" - clarkjohnsen 10:01:22 06/19/06 (4)

I enjoyed this in the theater last year. - Harmonia 16:11:09 06/19/06 (0)

Re: "A Russian twist on the Hollywood sci-fi saga" - Victor Khomenko 12:48:20 06/19/06 (0)

Re: - Jack G 10:26:24 06/19/06 (1)

Hey, thanks! Good reply. nt - clarkjohnsen 10:36:13 06/19/06 (0)

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