Day Watch
| Year: | 2008 |
| Production Co: | Bazeleys Production |
| Director: | Timur Bekmambetov |
| Writer: | Timur Bekmambetov |
| Cast: | Konstantin Khabensky |
Timur Bekmambetov's modern fable Night Watch was equal parts The Matrix, ancient Russian mythology and TV commercial (the world the director came from).
It was also an unexpected hit, turning stuffy, stoic European movies on their head and giving us a starburst of inventive visuals, a distinctive style and a classic good vs evil archetype.
Day Watch continues the story of the top-secret department that regulates the truce between the supernatural races of being who control the day and night - loosely based on vampires.
Hero Anton is given an idealistic and beautiful partner and when the son he learnt about in Night Watch starts causing havoc in The Gloom - the netherworld between the human and supernatural realms - he's dragged into the fracturing truce with the night people and the race for an ancient talisman that threatens to destabilise the peace and will tear Moscow in two.
But who cares about that when you can see a sports car drive up the side of a building to reach an important meeting? That's the attitude of the movie to a large extent too. Story? Pfft - check out how cool this is!
Like many directors who've come from TV, music videos, etc., Bekmambetov's more interested in the visual style and action that a story we've never seen before, which makes it all very cool and unchallenging fun.
It was also an unexpected hit, turning stuffy, stoic European movies on their head and giving us a starburst of inventive visuals, a distinctive style and a classic good vs evil archetype.
Day Watch continues the story of the top-secret department that regulates the truce between the supernatural races of being who control the day and night - loosely based on vampires.
Hero Anton is given an idealistic and beautiful partner and when the son he learnt about in Night Watch starts causing havoc in The Gloom - the netherworld between the human and supernatural realms - he's dragged into the fracturing truce with the night people and the race for an ancient talisman that threatens to destabilise the peace and will tear Moscow in two.
But who cares about that when you can see a sports car drive up the side of a building to reach an important meeting? That's the attitude of the movie to a large extent too. Story? Pfft - check out how cool this is!
Like many directors who've come from TV, music videos, etc., Bekmambetov's more interested in the visual style and action that a story we've never seen before, which makes it all very cool and unchallenging fun.