I enjoyed this movie well enough for the first half, but it lost me during the second. I think it would have a lot more impact if you had been raised in Moscow, to get some of the subtle cultural and political echoes which are clearly built into the story.

3 out of 5.

C


You know, if I didn't read the cource novel before seeing the movie, I would have not understood a thing that was going on in the second half. Mind you, the book itself is fairly confusing and the movie actually changed a LOT of stuff from it, but still, without reading it, you're rather lost on the happenings.

On the positive side is that the film, especially in its first half, is fairly imaginative and inventive. The visuals are nice and the actor playing Anton, the hero, was very well-chosen considering his character in the novel. The sad thing is that the novel, while not being great, still had more potential if the makers were provided with a bigger, Hollywood-like budget. It's really a case of a film where there are more scenes that would need heavy special effects in the novel, than there are in the actual film. Thus, the film is really somewhat of a mess.

Additionally, it is not an adaptation of the whole Night Watch book per se, but just of the first third of the book. There are three books in the series (Night Watch, Day Watch, Dusk Watch) and while the titles suggest that the first two books were adapted by now, in fact the both films just adapt the first book, Night Watch, without even touvhing upon the plot of Day Watch. That makes it all more confusing.

Loved the visuals (and if you see this on DVD, by the way, watch it in Russian with the English subtitles, which are cleverly manipulated), but for the most part I was just confused, bored, and occasionally annoyed.

C-

Oh, I forgot to review this.

Dkmuto summed it up well, though. It's pretty much trash, though kind of cool to look at. It's bad when a film like this can flat-out bore me to death.

C-

Well...I told you so!

The sequel's better, though.

4/10 -> D

People I know talked about this movie fairly positive. So finally I decided to watch it. And it's an awful mess. From start to finish.

Most of the things seem to be here just for the coolness of it (though that might have something to do with what Dr. Lecter says about how they only adapted the first third of the book - I wouldn't know because I heaven't read it.).

What's at first nice and different directing job, gets very annoying after 10-15 minutes of constant weird angles and fast cuts and scene changes. It doesn't feel like it should be like that, it feels more like Bekmambutov is practicing and showing off what he's capable of.

Both stoylines are horrid. The one with the woman and the vortex is unnecesary as hell. The one with the boy is also predictable as hell, and they drag it on and on, just to have a stupid final fight and so that the boy can side with the Dark side. Can this be more cliched? They also piled up a crapload of stories and character connections that never prove vital or necessary for the story. This could've been easily a much more enjoyable one hour movie. They obviously cut a lot from the book, so the result was a story with two boring central plots and a lot of the meaningless plots.

I mentioned fights and they really come off as lame here. Lamest fights I've seen in a while actually. Not even weird camera angles and fast cuts can mask the shitty fights.

The visuals were OK, but they can't save the movie.

A noisy, pretty mess.