Review of Day Watch (2006) by Rick R — 24 Feb 2010

Dnevnoy Dozor (2006).

Day Watch, or Night Watch II is the sequel to the Russian-made block-buster horror movie, Night Watch (2004). Where Night Watch was a good movie, the studio pulled out all of the stops in the making of this film. This is even a faster-paced movie with even more special effects, but be sure to watch the first movie first to get the full effect of what's going on.

The story goes that a race of super-humans called the "Others" joined the forces of evil or good. Early in history these forces of darkness and light found that they were so evenly matched, that they made a truce, guarded by two special police forces that try to keep everything equal. A Day Watch protecting the evil forces from the goody goody forces of the light, and a Night Watch protecting the good from the dark forces of evil. Neither side is supposed to enlist converts from the other side, but it sort of happens anyway.

Anton Gorodetsky (Konstantin Khabenskiy) is on the Night Watch, but has kind of a shadowy past. He's mentoring a young, but powerful new member, Svetlana (Mariya Poroshina). There's all sorts of witchcraft, vampires, ninjas, car chases, crashes, body-switching, time and dimensional travel. There's also the chalk of destiny which has an important roll in the movie.

A young boy from the previous movie, Yegor (Dmitriy Martynov), who's actually Anton's son, is a very strong Other, now working for the dark forces, and is bringing about the apocalypse. Is Anton able to stop this, and can he do it without killing his son?

The body switching scenes were also really funny, as well as the self-mocking jet ride where the jet barely makes it into the air. Moscow is shown as both a booming metropolis and a dark gothic place. I even liked how the subtitling was with some of the text is animated to illustrate what the person was saying. I'm no speed-reader though and the characters were talking pretty fast, so having this as a DVD would be preferable to viewing in the theaters. The DVD also gives you the option of using English dubbing, if you prefer.

This is an excellent movie and I highly recommend it.