Day Watch

Night Watch arrived in cinemas in 2004, hyped as a Russian fantasy film that had the potential to cross over to international audiences. Using ambitious storytelling and state of the art special effects it appeared as though it could be a potential franchise like Lord Of The Rings. Written by Sergei Lukyanenko a well known science fiction and fantasy author in his native Russia, Lukyanenko transcended anonymity internationally when his series of books were snapped up to be made in a trilogy of feature films.

Day Watch is the second film in the trilogy - and it's bigger and bolder than its predecessor, featuring the same characters from the original film but fleshing them out more.

Director Timur Bekmambetov’s film blends elements of sci-fi, fantasy and horror and can never be accused of being boring, although it is, occasionally, a little confusing. In a world of vampires, witches and warlocks we follow Anton (Konstantin Khabensky) in his quest to prevent the world from ending. This film follows his quest to find the white chalk that can alter time. Why, you ask, is this so important to him? Well by doing this Anton must face the consequences of his actions from the first film, and erase those mistakes by finding the elusive Chalk of Fate.

To fully describe the plot would spoil the viewer’s appreciation of Day Watch plus it would be hard to squeeze it into one sentence. The movie has many twists and turns and is epic in scale, whereas Night Watch was darker in theme and tone, this movie is a lot brighter. Visually, in its colour palette and also in terms of its action sequences which get more impressive and are a compelling watch.

Bekmambetov directs with an a confident style and has upped the bar again here with his vision for Day Watch, clearly he has an interesting career ahead of him and I’m keen to see how he works within Hollywood after the success of this series of films.

Day Watch will appeal to many viewers keen to find out how the saga ends, some have mentioned after watching these films that they have experienced a similar feeling to when they watched Star Wars for the first time. I’m not sure I’m in agreement but I do feel the movie should be seen if only to witness a unique brand of storytelling from a Russian perspective.