Review of Day Watch (2006) by Patrick S — 12 Apr 2009

DAY WATCH.

Day Watch(Details here),is the sequel to the insanely popular film â??Night Watchâ??, which became the highest grossing film in Russia of all time. However, Day Watch managed to surpass all record in itâ??s home country Russia, grossing over $30 million in the box office, and with good cause, becoming a cultish sensation across the world quickly.

Konstantin Khabensky returns to play Anton, a member of the Night Watch, a group of people who watch over the truce between forces of light an dark. His son, Yegor(Dmitry Martynov), who joined the forces of dark at then of the film â??Night watchâ??, is groomed to become one of the most powerful of the â??othersâ??, as is Antonâ??s trainee Svetlana(Mariya Poroshina). After Anton becomes set up, a series of events that could lead to the end of the world take place, with the mysterious chalk of fate posing both a threat and salvation.

Nearly a century ago, Russian cinema made one of the most important contributions to the art form of all time, the use and value of editing via Sergei Eisenstein, a promising communist director. From this home of cinematic editing, we are gifted with more greatness. Editing within this piece is truly fantastic, really helping to create the surrealist world that the characters inhabit, and portraying bizarre events and states of mind with a dizzying confusion that is in fact a clarity of sorts.

The director Timur Bekmambetov, who also wrote the film, does a wonderful job, with Sergei Trofimov by his side as cinematographer, we are given a visual feast, blending computer generated images with live action in a way that has yet to have been attempted by anyone else, using the camera to further the narrative instead of just telling it, we are not given a window to this world, but brought directly into it.

The writing itself is slightly strange, and clearly is a highly cultural piece that will inevitably lose something in translation, but this does not stop it from being a highly stylised piece in terms of characterisation and dialogue, that although being odd, does so for purpose rather than simplistic effect, giving us actual characters over the typical stereotypes we are so used to from high budget films.

Performances are also of a high standard, we find it near impossible to see actors, as the characters are so convincing, which is quite a feat when they are so strange and outlandish, avoiding the farce that usually comes with something out of the ordinary, all of the central cast deserve a great deal of respect for their convincing performances that manage to permeate the language barrier with ease.

Overall, Day Watch is a very impressive piece of cinema, which combines action, character and art in an almost seamless way, however there is a definite dependency on the previous film in order to fully comprehend and appreciate the film, as it assuredly loses something without having first viewed itâ??s predecessor. That being said, all of the elements come together brilliantly in this film and definitely make it worth watching. Some audiences may struggle with it, but nevertheless, it is unmissable.