Night Watch (Nochnoy dozor)
Timur Bekmambetov

Dolan Cummings
posted 26 September 2005

Night Watch is the first in a planned trilogy of films based on a series of novels about supernatural 'Others' who secretly patrol the streets of present-day Moscow to maintain a centuries-old truce between the forces of light and darkness. Of course, it could easily be awful, but it isn't.

The film combines a certain philosophical bent with cinematic flair and wit to make something like a cross between The Matrix and Star Wars, while remaining unmistakably and refreshingly Russian in flavour. After asking a witch based in a Moscow apartment block to cast a spell to get his wife back, Anton discovered that he too was an 'Other', something like a vampire to be specific. (Other Others can change into animals and stuff like that.) But like all Others, he had a choice: he could choose light or darkness.

For now at least, the same goes for mere mortals. According to the terms of the truce, neither side is allowed to coerce humans into good or evil. Hence the Others exist on the fringes of society. Those dark Others like the witch who interfere in human affairs are dealt with by the light Others of the Night Watch, which Anton has joined, while light Others are similarly policed by the dark Day Watch (the title of the next film). According to prophecy, however, there will come an Other so powerful that his choice will upset the balance of forces, ending the truce and plunging the whole world into turmoil. Anton is charged with stopping a couple of vampires who are trying to lure prey with a supernatural 'call' that Anton can detect because he is also a vampire. This leads him to the heart of the prophecy, and after much excitement, the film ends with that momentous choice.

The film's visual style is immediately impressive. It opens with epic scenes reminiscent of The Lord of the Rings as the medieval armoured-Others battle before the truce, and then moves on to a grimy contemporary Moscow that recalls Bladerunner, or perhaps Brazil. When the Others go into 'the gloom', a hidden dimension to which only they have access, the air buzzes with mosquitoes. Anton's face is sallow, his veins pulse visibly. Even the English subtitles are deployed creatively, sometimes appearing in unexpected parts of the screen, like the Zap and Pow signs in the 1960s TV series of Batman. And of course there is the obligatory Buffy reference, with the Slayer appearing on someone's TV.

Beneath the surface, the film ponders the nature of good and evil: the distinction is less than crystal clear, and it's hard to know whether that's just because of the truce or not. Certainly the Night Watch engage in the same sorts of shady compromises familiar from any darkish cop film, while the dark Others can be sympathetic if not exactly seductive. In one striking scene, a newly-sired and literally bloodthirsty vampire girl walks forlornly through a traffic tunnel in harsh artificial light, cars swerving to avoid her. Her vampire lover and sire has been killed by the Night Watch, with disputed legality, and now she is just a pawn in a game between light and dark.

It is perhaps too early to judge the trilogy's moral philosophy, but this is a promising start, and works well enough as Russian bunkum if that's all it turns out to be.