Day Watch (Unrated)
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Movie Reviews of Day Watch (Unrated)
Movie Review: Great Visuals, Messy Script
Summary: 3 Stars
Let me first start this review by saying that you have to have seen the first film "Night Watch." Though its sequel "Day Watch" begins with the introductory section explaining what happened in the original, it is too short and fast, quite tough to follow even for those who have seen the first one. Moreover, you cannot fully understand the meanings of the concluding chapters of "Day Watch" without seeing some of the episodes in the predecessor.
In "Day Watch" there are so many things going on - vampires, sorcery, etc - plus so many characters - some interesting, others just dull. There are also "Chalk of Destiny," an impending war between the forces of Darkness and Light, and a very campy shower scene. Whatever you have seen in the preceding "Night Watch" such as the father-son theme between Anton (Konstantin Khabensky) and his son Yegor, is almost forgotten or takes a different turn in the second film.
What you see here instead is a series of loosely connected episodes. So Anton is now seen training a young intrepid partner (Mariya Poroshina), but Anton is accused of what he didn't do and next we are told that his son is "Great Dark One" and there is also "Great Light One" and ... in short, the overwritten script is simply a mess.
Still you can enjoy the film for what it is, a Russian dark fantasy with many imaginative and entertaining set-pieces. The director Timur Bekmambetov certainly has great visual style and the film's playful subtitles are also unique and interesting to see. I sincerely wish that he uses more coherent storyline for the third installment.
Movie Review: style triumphs over substance
Summary: 3 Stars
Timur Bekmambetov's "Day Watch" has the look and feel of a deliberately manufactured "cult phenomenon." This in-your-face, aggressively stylish sequel to the hit Russian film "Night Watch" tells a hyper-kinetic but largely incoherent tale of vampires from another dimension who keep crossing over into the "real world" to wreak all sorts of havoc on the people who live there. Anton and Svetlana are two law enforcement officials trained to combat these otherworldly terrorists.
It doesn't much matter if the story itself doesn't make a whole lot of sense, since "Day Watch" is really all about atmosphere and style anyway. The ginned-up editing, the frenetic camerawork, the subtitles dancing all over the screen, and the twisty/turny scenario involving shape-shifting, body-switching secret agents all add up to a full two-hours-and-eleven-minutes worth of migraine-inducing sensory overload (not unlike a Robert Rodriguez film on crack). Yet, for all that, the film is never boring and, indeed, all the visual and auditory stimuli makes it virtually impossible for one to tear one's eyes off the screen even for a moment.
Thus, "Day Watch" will probably satisfy the niche audience for which it's aiming. And even those with a lesser inclination for this sort of thing may find the movie watchable and even intriguing at times - even if it all does get to be just a tad much after awhile.
Movie Review: DVD Flaws
Summary: 3 Stars
As it's already been mentioned many times before, I felt that Fox made a huge mistake releasing this movie with the plain white subtitles. One of the first draws to Night Watch for me was the subtitle play. The fact that they were actively incorporated in the film itself was really cool. I saw the sequel in the theaters in the first week and walked away feeling that it was even better than Night Watch. For one thing, it developed many of the background characters much more thoroughly. For another thing, the subtitles again were really fun to watch...almost advancing the plot themselves.
Then...I saw the DVD. Had I seen this on DVD first, there is no question about it...I would have probably HATED this movie. The plain white subtitles really took a LOT from the movie quality. I may also be mistaken that other things were removed (though I can't think of any example).
That said...wait to buy this version. Eventually Fox will want to suck more money from people by releasing the "original theater release" version. Wait for that before buying.
Movie Review: Must see NIGHTWATCH first for this to be worthwhile
Summary: 3 Stars
Who knew the russians could make decent movies??? Anyway, I was fortunate enough to have heard of Nightwatch before the advetisements came out for this sequel. It uses the same cast in both movies and I guess someone could watch this and enjoy it on it's own. The entire final 1/3 of this movie refers back to all the events that happened in the first movie. In this you only get tiny little clips to show the connections, but none of the whole back story of the lead character, his wife, his nearly unborn son and why this "apocalypse" was approaching.
I honestly do not consider this to be a true horror movie or it's predecessor, but it does have some very cool special effect scenes and the storyline is at least logical and fairly easy to follow if you watch both movies. I also think that since the story is "over", they do not need to make any further sequels.
Movie Review: "Oh, oh, RASPUTIN, crazy sexy love machine"
Summary: 3 Stars
Believe it or not, something is very similar sometimes in air, different for languages used to around in the USA and Russia.
Maybe, this apocalyptic spirit of Star-Wars-in-materialisation is the most common determination of modern Russia's blood-thirsty sexy-advert horror story of global demolition in megapolitan urban environment.
This is a story of nothing for foreigner and for a local it is of a today in-democracy-over-head factually deeply traditional on any merits country Russia is.
Perhaps, native text provides better comprehending of actions and Russian lyrics than DVD international translations available.
Not so bad for a new boy on a block sustained with blood-sucking, unreasonable murdering and same gender affairs.