Who Watches the Night Watch?

Why, the Day Watch of course.

I recently (finally) got around to watching Night Watch (Nochnoy dozor) and Day Watch (Dnevnoy dozor) the first two installments in the Russian trilogy inspired by the book series of the same name. One of my first thoughts, while halfway through Night Watch, was that based solely upon the trailers, the creators of Wanted borrowed quite a few pages from it’s themes and styles. Of course, moments later I did an IMDB search and learned that both films have the same writer/director, Timur Bekmambetov, so that mystery was promptly solved.

The Watch films explore the classic light vs. dark themes popularized by the likes of The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and hundreds of other books, movies, classic plays and even fairy tales, albeit this time with a new twist. The setting is modern day Moscow and nothing pans out to be merely black and white. Instead, a theme of utter grey seems to permeate both the light and dark sides, and is explored with interesting effect.

A lot of other intriguing themes and character arcs are presented, though most are only superficially examined. The story relies a lot on coincidence and chance encounters, and supernatural powers seem to spring out of nowhere with little explanation or support. What’s worse, it feels like every person the protagonist happens to encounter turns out to be an Other, the term for members of the light or dark side, making you start to wonder if there are more Others out there, than there are normal humans.

There’s a great Truce between the two powers that is never fully explained, and a lot of terms and concepts, such as an unfathomable database and the good guys' cover as power station employees, are presented as an assumed condition with no supporting discourse.

There’s also got to be some reason why there are always thousands of birds flying around (did I miss an explanation in there somewhere?) and there’s an odd baby-doll-spider amalgamation that is eerily similar to one of the bully Sid’s mangled contraptions in Pixar’s Toy Story, though they never seem to say what the heck it actually is.

Overall, I enjoyed the flicks, though I was not overly pleased with the Day Watch ending. Better that it be the ending of the second movie, though, and not the third, as it does leave one wondering where they’ll go in the next installment. It certainly took a different stance than most classic mid-trilogy offerings, so the creators can only be lauded for that, though what is different for a second installment, would be ordinary as the ending of a single film or final installment.

In the end, I’m left really wanting to check out the original novels. I assume they present the themes and plot arcs a lot more cohesively and therefore with more power and inspiration. I’ll definitely take the time to watch the final film, Twilight Watch, when it comes out in 2009, and in the meantime am a lot more inspired to see Wanted. Though I haven’t heard the best of things about it, and I fear that it will end up being the Hard Target to John Woo’s Hard-Boiled. Though I have enjoyed a lot of Woo’s American efforts, they’ve never seemed to live up to his Hong Kong work. That seems to be a recurring theme for a lot of international auteurs looking to make the transition to Hollywood.