There’s a scene in the end of the
original Blade film in which our sword-swirling protagonist
unexpectedly appears in The Mother Land, there’s snow on the
floor, he’s wearing a long, black coat;
he mutters something menacing in Russian, and whips of hot breath curl
from his lips. It is bar far the most incredible moment in the history
of cinema.
I embellish, of course, but there's definitely something about Russia
that exudes a granular, raspy and incontestably cool connotation. One
man who knows more on the subject is Night Watch director Timur Bekmambetov,
who has single-handedly resurrected the Russian film
industry post-communism; taking a risky leap in creating ‘mainstream’ film
within a country whose main cinematic exports are socio-political arthouse
pieces. Night Watch, an effects happy spectacular which includes vampires,
witches and the forces of darkness, was made for under £3
million - about the price of a Tom Cruise belch - and went on to make
excess of around £30 million. All this in a country where film
piracy is so bad, it is considered a social-transgression to purchase
an official DVD.
Shred business-sense, yes, and it would be nice to say that those Russian underdogs have taken a big bloody-bite on Hollywood’s bombastic jugular and aesthetic, but that isn’t quite the case. Director Timur Bekmambetov isn’t interested in baroque and ostentatious pieces, his personal exemplars are Hollywood behemoths James Cameron, George Lucas and Quentin Tarantino.
So keen on creating a Hollywood movie in Russia, he’s even decided to shoot the second and third films –Day Watch and Dusk Watch respectively, in America, and is even considering making one of them in English. Yet fret not, oh-Hollywood-pooh-poohers, for Night Watch is no brainless piece of cinematic garbage, - you may have noticed that Michael Bay is not one of Bekmambetov’s idols – and it boasts more brain-scorchingly and mind-blowingly cool moments since the Matrix first flo-mo'd.
And that leads us to another of Night Watch’s unfortunate references. Billing a film as Matrix-meets-Lord of the Rings is a boast that no film can achieve, but to the film’s credit, it never attempts to. Besides the obvious comparison; a story arch which foretells that the birth of a sacred one that will bring order to the warring worlds (that’s the clandestine battle between the Day Watch and the Night Watch, folks), there is little which correlates to either. For those concerned with action, there is lots of it, - or rather, we’re given just enough to wow us and move the onwards - and for those concerned with the fantastic, Night Watch has more imagination in its subtitles than most films muster in their entirety.
Anton Gorodetsky (played by Konstantin Khabensky) is the everyman who discovers he has the ability to have prophetic visions when he decides – probably on poor judgement, considering – to seek revenge on his ex-missus. 12 years onward, he’s downing pigs-blood in an aid to heighten his vampire hunting senses. Once he finds his quarry, he becomes the victim of a severe rib-kicking and gets a pair of scissors jabbed through hands. Ouch.
Clearly, Anton is not Jean Claude Van-Dame, he’s not even Buffy, he’s simply a man lost in a world that has changed irreparably around him; the world which he is now a part -warring ‘Others’ calling a truce to prevent complete inhalation of both parties - all rings true to the burdens of the films location, Russia. Besides the Cold-War allegory, Night Watch is a film that still manages to dazzle and be fresh in a time where fantasy and trilogies have become so common they invented the ‘quadriligy’.
Night Watch does however have its faults, particularly the final third of the film feels like there’s been an accidental slip from third to to fifth gear, the film surges forward, cogs and narrative whir too rapidly for the audience to adjust. Yet even fleeting moments of confusion can be replaced with four of five moments of brilliance: invisible heads pumping blood, squeaky toys spouting spider’s legs, spinal swords, owl-ladies, the gloaming… its utterly fantastic in every sense. Roll on parts two and three…