Movies: Night Watch

I can count the number of Russian blockbusters I've seen on one hand, and now "Night Watch" joins the list:



As the trailer indicated, "Night Watch" is all about the fight between Light and Dark, though the side of Light is not perfectly good and the side of Dark not perfectly evil. There is a truce between them, with a Night Watch to police the Dark and a Day Watch to police the Light. Into this world steps our protagonist, Anton, a member of the Night Watch with some of his own personal demons in his past to confront.

It's hard to review a movie like this. It's definitely not a typical horror movie - it skews more closely to an adventure/drama with horror elements than anything else. Also complicating matters is the fact that I could only get my hands on the dubbed version, not the original Russian language track, which obviously makes a huge difference in terms of performance and mood.

The movie is stylish, with an appealing visual sensibility despite the shoestring (by Hollywood standards) budget. The flipside of this, though, is that there might not be as much action or supernatural events as you mgiht expect from this kind of movie. In fact, the opening scene of "Blade" contains more fighting than this entire film. Additionally, few of the characters get developed besides Anton.

Rating: 7/10