Cinema Review - Day Watch

Dir: Timur Bekmambetov
Rating: Five Stars
Starring: Konstantin Khabensky, Mariya Poroshina,
Vladimir Menshov, Viktor Verzhbitsky,
Dmitry Martynov, Zhanna Friske,
Aleksoi Chadov.
Run time: 132 min
Release Date: October 5th

Night Watch shocked audiences back in 2004 with its brilliance, nobody was expecting a film of this calibre to come out of Russia, but it did. Now, the sequel, Day Watch, delivers the sequel of dreams. Two words to describe Night Watch are “Flawless” and “Great”. Two words to describe Day Watch? “Flawless” and “Phenomenal”. Following Anton Gorodetsky (Khabensky), as soldier of light he is a member of the Night Watch and polices the soldiers of darkness to ensure that they keep up their end of a centuries old truce forged by Geser, Lord of Light (Menshov) and Zavulon, General of Darkness (Verzbitsky). The soldiers of darkness meanwhile, form the Day Watch, and ensure that the light keep their end of the bargain. Following the events of Night Watch, Anton is trying to fix his life, to do this, he learns of an ancient artefact, The Chalk of Fate. Unfortunately, Zavulon, who is looking to reignite the war between good and evil, does not want Anton to succeed, as that would interfere with his plans. Brilliant storytelling throughout as each character is fully explored, as well as some quite complex relationships, all climax with an epic portrayal of Zavulon’s evil machinations. An interesting feature of these films is the close integration of the subtitles, rather than just appearing blandly at the bottom of the screen, the subtitles relate to the action, and also to the character using numerous clever devices. Many people prefer dubbing to subtitles, but here, the subtitles are so closely linked to the action that I would go as far as to say that anybody watching in the original Russian, or a dubbed version, is missing out. My advice to you, if you haven’t already seen Night Watch, rent it and then get to the cinema as fast as you can to see this film.