Hey folks, Harry here... Now - the coolest foreign film coming to the United States this year is Chan Wook Park's OLDBOY. The best Ass-kicking foreign film is ONG BAK. However, for genre fans... folks that love badass weird as hell, kinetically brilliant auteur driven fantasy... your film comes from Russia... and it is called NIGHT WATCH. I'm dying to see this version of the film. I saw this one last year and fell in love. The subtitles sound like a work of art layered atop a film that is already fucking fantastic. Here ya go, Hagen is a helluva writer in his own right - and here's his take from the screening at the Berlin Film Festival...

Harry,

Great to hear from you!! (And Drew!!)

I might have known you'd have written about it all that time ago... if only AICN had a search facility! ;)

Anyway, here's my piece -- hope you can use it...

I just got back from the Berlin Film Festival, where I was lucky enough to see the stunning Russian vampire flick NIGHT WATCH (aka NOCHNOJ DOZOR) which is part BLADE, part MATRIX, part NEAR DARK    

Now, it's been a while since Aint It Cool first mentioned this amazing film, which was made for $4 million (a staggering budget by Russian standards), grossed $13 million in its first three weeks in Mother Russia, and wound up outgrossing Spider-Man 2 and LotR: Return of the King at the Soviet box office something which caused some controversy at the press conference, but which the producers insisted was necessary because the third film will be to NIGHT WATCH what THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW was to THE NIGHT MY FENCE BLEW DOWN.    

The version shown in Berlin was the new, slick subtitled 35mm version which Fox Searchlight will be releasing later in the year.  And like the rest of the film, the subtitles have to be seen to be believed something akin to the way a comic letterer might letter a comic book, if they had access to a couple of hundred grand's worth of CG.    

Set in contemporary Moscow, and directed by Timur Bekmambetov and upholding The Truce.  In turn, the Day Watch keeps check on its Light counterparts.    

Cut to Moscow, 1992, where a besotted young man named Anton (Konstantin Khabensky) engages the services of a witch in an effort to win back his girlfriend, who is pregnant with another man's child.  The witch offers to bring back the girl and get rid of the unborn child, but only if he agrees to take the burden of the crime upon himself.  He accepts the offer which, since they are invisible to humans, means he must be one of them, an Other.   

 NOTE: I'm not spoiling anything here sets in motion a chain of events which will lead at one point or another to a horrific plane crash, a vortex over an apartment building in downtown Moscow, a city-wide blackout, a female pariah who brings bad luck wherever she goes, and the fulfilment of a thousand-year-old prophecy which will signal the rise of The Great Other, a powerful being whose choice between the dark side and the light will have catastrophic consequences for the whole of existence.    

There are plenty of amazing things about this film, not least the fact that Russia isn't exactly known for its fantasy films (Tarkovsky's STALKER and SOLARIS come to mind) despite being steeped in mythology, witchcraft and the "everyday supernatural".  The lack of horror, fantasy and sci-fi films probably explains why the special effects (both CGI and physical/prosthetic) are as good as anything to come out of Hollywood and boy, did they get one!  But the effects never get in the way of the fantastic story, which is complicated but not convoluted, rich enough to get your teeth into but not so complex you can't get your head around it.  The performances are far beyond anything in equivalent movies from the US (though, okay, Kris Kristoffersen was pretty good in BLADE, and who doesn't love Lance Henriksen in NEAR DARK?)      

Yes, it¹s in Russian but somehow the Russian language suits vampires (even though, for Russians, vampire mythology is a Western import), and  gives the whole thing a more exotic, mystical feel.  Besides, did I mention how great the subtitles are?  No wonder Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez are fans.  (Talking of which, have they gone on record anywhere talking about it? All I can find is that QT has seen it three times, and the US 1-sheet may end up with a quote from him on it.)  Fox hints that NIGHT WATCH will be popping up at various sci-fi, comics and memorabilia conventions over the coming months, so keep an ear to the ground, and see this extraordinary mindfuck of a film before they remake it and ruin it.

Cheers and well done on the re-design... I bet you can convince Fox Searchlight to let you have the trailer: I've just seen a rough cut of it and it's pretty darn good... "THE BREAKTHROUGH FILM OF MODERN RUSSIAN CINEMA" -- nice ;)

All the best, as always --

Hagen

NIGHT WATCH Website Is Here!