Day Watch

After reading the book trilogy I was looking forward to these movies. As in any adaptation, not everything makes it the screen. The movie was OK, I like the supernatural subject matter so I was able to stomach watching the whole movie. What drove me crazy is the translation!!!! I speak Russian and the subtitles were totally off. I understand that some things don't translate literally but in some parts the subtitles had nothing to do with the words that the actors spoke. If anyone is in the industry, can you please enlighten us on the process of how the subtitles come about??? Do the people at FOX think that there will be no Russian speaking people watching the movie?

Phew! What an imagination these boys have!! This entire experience is very dream-like in that the strangest things make sense in this universe, you can flush yourself down a toilet, or perhaps drive a car in a MOST unusual manner, or maybe slip into another dimension to escape your enemy.

This is a world where dark ones and light ones live in an uneasy truce among the unsuspecting living. Once you get your head around this world's rules it starts to make sense and it becomes an action drama like any other, yet unlike any other. And for that, you should see it- but don't expect to understand it very much at first.. it helps if you saw the first film of this series- Night Watch, but that film sucked in comparison to this one in my opinion- and maybe that was just budgetary constraints but hey- it still sucked.

The good thing about having seen Night Watch is that it will make you like this one a whole lot more because you will understand what's going on and then focus on the plot and the action- which is quite an orgy of bizarre circumstance.

So suffer through Night Watch, then watch this and I think you will get a really unique experience out of this- it's fantasy, vampires, spell-casters and a very omnipresent Russia woven into this all. It's a must see because of it's uniqueness and to be forgiven for the occasional stupidity or clumsiness in transition it presents, it has a unique beauty that needs preservation just like a Russian. :-)

I must applaud the director for creating a scene with women and high action where you would have expected to see a man. When you see the movie- you will see what I mean, and it's just one of many of the clever and confounding -dream-rules apply- plot twists this thing will throw at you with total abandon.

Let me say first and foremost do not even think of viewing this movie unless you've seen the first film. Simply put this movie just starts and goes, assuming that you've seen the first film. There are no reintroductions, just forward motion so be prepared, see Nightwatch.

Picking up some time after Night Watch ends this film concerns two parallel stories Anton's search for a means of righting all that has gone wrong since he joined the Watch, and his framing for the murder of one of the Day Watch. The two things are not of course, that far apart as everyone soon finds out.

This is epic story telling and it covers a great deal of ground. Do not blink or go to the bathroom with out being able to pause this since this moves like the wind. Unfortunately even with close attention a good deal of the plot is going to be clouded. There are lots of characters, lots of plot points many carried over from the first film (which in retrospect I should have watched before I dove into this film). You can fee the film's origins as a novel bleeding off the screen giving this version of Moscow a very real sense of place.

The action and craftsmanship of this film is almost without equal. The set pieces are spectacular, there are things in this movie to make your jaw drop open (the influx of American money can be seen on the screen in sequences that top the first film). The cast is amazing, creating some really good guys and some vile bad ones. Its first rate all around.

I really did like this film a great deal, though I am a tad disappointed. I don't know whether its the fact that the story is too big for its two and a half running time, or if its the fact that it doesn't go where I expected it to go. I think I'm going to have to see it again, preferably when I can see this not long after the first film.

If you saw and liked the first film see this. If you weren't crazy about the first film you may want to try it. If you haven't seen the first film see that first.

Well, I watched Day Watch with my American girlfriend in a St. Petersburg cinema a few hours ago, and we both enjoyed it. The relatively huge success of of the first episode obviously allowed the producers to pump more cash into this second installment, and it shows throughout the film. The CG sequences are slicker and more impressive, and so is pretty much everything else, including the consistently confident directing. Even the fact that the premise is so annoyingly weak doesn't spoil the fun as much as it did in the first film.

As a Russian though, the thing I liked best was the unmistakable Russian-ness of the movie. As far as film-making is concerned, I don't normally mean that as a compliment, but with Day Watch it is different. While it can definitely appeal to a wider international audience (my girlfriend, albeit a bit of a Russophile, is an indication of that), it is at the same time literally packed with all sorts of clever wordplay and references to various realities of Russian life, ranging from political satire to hilariously blatant product placement.

Even though I can enjoy a less obnoxious art-house film every now and then, on the whole I prefer clever commercial movies, and Day Watch falls into that category very neatly.

I saw Night Watch some time ago and I thought: Humm... What a nice movie. Interesting. Than I went to see Day Watch on the day of the premiere. Tickets had to be bought 3 hours earlier in order to get some. There was a crowd was so packed that even visiting the toilet was impossible. When the movie was starting I thought: well just the next over-talked-about movie, nothing special, BUT What I saw just left me astonished. I could never think such thing could happen. It is comparable by grandiosity to Titanic, and to StarWars by excitement, to The Matrix by plot. I have not seen such a thing yet. It combines Comedy, Action, Drama, Triller, Sci-Fy, Fantasy, Horror in such a manner that they bond without arguments. It's a MUST SEE!!!