« Surf's Up | Main | Golden Door »
June 15, 2007
Day Watch
(out of four)
Like Russia's answer to The Matrix and Lord of the Rings trilogies, Day Watch offers the second chapter in an epic battle between the forces of Light and Dark, the result of which is a gaping gray area where nothing much makes sense. That's right in keeping with Timur Bekmambetov's original Night Watch, a contemporary vampire story that served as a jaw-dropping sampler reel for Russia's special effects houses, virtually all of which worked on the film.
Night Watch was full of visionary ideas: There were foxy ladies who transformed into wildcats, men who could flip industrial-sized trucks with an outstretched hand and a murky mosquito-filled parallel world called "The Gloom" where bad guys did their dirty work. For the most part, the sheer spectacle excused the fact that the story was so confusing: something about a guy named Anton caught between Light and Darkness.
That film ended much as the first Matrix did, only the scales seemed to be tipped toward evil when Anton's son, a gifted "Great Other," opted to join the Dark Ones. The cliffhanger promised that the sequel would settle any and all unanswered questions. Instead, despite its English language explain-all prologue, Day Watch merely poses new questions.
Anton finds himself torn between his son and Svetlana (the blond woman riding the subway in the first movie and a Gifted Other for the good guys). Day Watch also introduces a cosmic piece of chalk that allows its carrier to rewrite history. It's not nearly as elegant a totem as The One Ring but serves as the perfect tool to inspire more wild and crazy special effects.
When things get dull, Bekmambetov simply bends physics to pull off another totally original visual trick, like the one where devil-girl Alisa rides her cherry red Mazda RX-8 up the side of a Moscow skyscraper, through a window and down the hall.
On the Night Watch DVD, the director pledged, "The second movie's much wider and more understandable," but it's not nearly as epic as fans might wish, and the leaps of logic prove considerably harder to follow.
A movie like this only serves to illustrate how the rest of the world must feel watching Hollywood exports like X-Men 3 or Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, movies that hardly make sense here at home. Audiences in Thailand and Tunisia no doubt scratch their heads and marvel at the glorious waste of all those gonzo special effects. Day Watch is no different: It delivers more cutting-edge eye candy but defies any attempt at understanding.
[as featured in The Miami Herald]
Posted by Peter Debruge on