MOVIE REVIEW: 'Day Watch'


From today's Oregonian ....




Quentin Tarantino tells us that Russia's "Night Watch" series is "the next 'Lord of the Rings.'" He's wildly overstating the case -- but I can see why these movies crank him up.

The two films -- 2004's "Night Watch" and 2006's "Day Watch," both massive box-office hits in Russia -- are adapted from the first book in a tetralogy of fantasy novels by Sergey Lukyanenko. You could fill acres of newsprint with a geeked-out explanation of the details of Lukyanenko's universe, but basically it boils down to this:

In modern-day Moscow, a bunch of supernatural bureaucrats maintain a centuries-old truce between the forces of "Light" and "Dark." In a blatant Cold War metaphor, this truce is secretly policed under the noses of ignorant Muscovites by shapeshifters, vampires, psychics, witches, ageless warriors and God knows what else. If the truce is broken, it's mutually assured apocalypse.

What makes these movies fun is twofold: First, there's a weird kick in watching a dense fantasy universe filtered through Eastern Bloc bureaucracy. "Night Watch" and "Day Watch" are just so thoroughly Russian: Parallel universes collide in blocky urban Moscow -- and universe-changing conflagrations are settled by minor functionaries at Chinese restaurants, vodka-sozzled karaoke birthday parties, hotels and power-company boardrooms.

But the chief appeal lies in director Timur Bekmambetov's ability to come up with retina-blasting visuals that surprise even in the post-"Matrix" era, where we only notice special effects when they don't work.

"Day Watch," just released here, is full of visual insanity. And if you found the first film visually stunning and more than a little narratively disjointed, well, this is more of the same.

The story -- set a year and change after "Night Watch" -- is a convoluted yarn featuring a hilariously dense prologue; body-switching as an excuse for lipstick-lesbian action; a murder and a frame-up; forbidden love affairs; a superpowered kid; and a quest for a legendary "Chalk of Fate" that allows people to write their destinies.

As you watch everyone get worked up over "Dark Others" and "Light Others" and "Great Light Others" and entering the "Second Level Gloom," it can start to feel a bit like watching someone else play a D&D game when you don't know the rules.

But again, there's something charming about this working-class fantasy universe. Bekmambetov's images of apocalypse are just too crazy not to admire: He's visualized a world where children's toys can lay waste to entire cities and a trashy pop-star witch can drive a sports car up the side of a hotel.

(And, as with "Night Watch," the English subtitles are subtly animated to comment on the onscreen action, much like comic-book sound effects. I know: This sounds unbelievably corny on the page. But it looks incredibly cool onscreen.)
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B; 132 minutes; rated R for violence.

'Day Watch' (The Oregonian, June 8, 2007)

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Posted: Fri - June 8, 2007 at 08:04 AM        

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