Keeper70

0/10

Certainly, Night Watch is not a completely original tale and it follows on from many great good versus evil stories over the years. Where it ploughs its own furrow is setting the story in modern day Moscow, albeit from 2004, and playing the film entirely straight. There is nothing here that you would not see in a crime-caper, spy or war story yet it is a about fantastic forces – shape shifters, vampires and the like. It is easy to go along with, in fact considering the amount of plot holes and ludicrous storylines more ‘realistic’ and ‘grounded’ films often have in them the story, motivations and situations somehow seem more believable. The images and cinematography are as important to the director and story as the actors and script and due to this some clunky moments and bit-part scenery chewing is diluted. The knowing style of the movie will annoy a certain type of viewer and I understand that but if you are fan of bang-bang-bang cut shots and fast moving ‘kinetic’ type shooting. This was style used in music videos and horror films that has since been generally discarded. Be warned it is hectic and some parts of the film will be lost to you at some stage – I think this is conscious decision by the makers and concentration is needed at all times – even then you may not ‘get it all’ Some part of the story and characters are never explained fully and this can be frustrating but in my opinion spoon feeding storylines and plots is a bad thing, it stagnates the imagination. If you don’t like sub-titles or jump-shot cuts than probably this Is not the film for you. The location of Moscow, clearly using the variety of buildings and locations, communist and pre-communist, is a positive boon for the makers and refreshing for many westerners. The take on light and dark, good and evil, I also found different, certainly more ‘knowing’ and adult with the line between them blurred and not quite as distinct as we like to think. The acting from the main characters is solid and believable if a little melodramatic at times, is this a Russian-style I’m not sure? It was nice to see a film where people looked normal and did not have glow-in-dark perfectly symmetrical teeth although those days are now gone. This was standard good versus evil storyline with new twists and a different take and more watchable than utter tosh like Underworld and its seventy-five sequels, there is no glamour here, no heroes, just dirty, difficult work to be completed by both sides with no clear winners or losers. More like real life than many real life, realistic, adult-orientated stories with similar themes. As a side note I do know there is a version of this film by an American distribution company that had the subtitles special made for the film so they were almost part of, or in the style, of the scene they appear in – it was not on this Blu Ray.