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?

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.

The visual effects are superb, using state of the art CGI with true artistry to create an original and interesting new look.

Unfortunately the characters are all clichés: a troubled loner cop haunted by his past, his doormat girlfriend, the crusty chief of police, the sexy bad girl, the aristocratic villain, etc.

The problem is not so much that the film makers populated the film with clichés, but that they don't do anything with them. They all play their predictable roles with predictable dialog and that's all.

Another major problem with that there is a lot of fighting, done with magic, but they never explain the magic powers, so you never know what is going on. Sometimes getting punched is bad, sometimes getting hit by a bus doesn't seem to hurt the guy. Sometimes they can shoot magic at each other, and sometimes they can't. It's visually stunning, but you don't know who is winning or losing or who is dangerous and who isn't. It's like watching a sport where you don't know the rules.

The first movie had many of the same problems, but it also had some interesting scenes, like the vampire girl in traffic and the first time the main character encounters magic. "Day Watch" has one interesting scene, the opening one set in the past, but it's bland from then on.

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!!!

Day watch manages to be something none of those Hollywood sci-fi saga type movies never could. It combines EVERYTHING in itself. Action, drama, suspense, CGI that's definitely better, and more believable, than in any of the matrix movies, a very intricate plot, that you have to follow carefully throughout the movie, wonderful acting and great dialogs. Well you'd say, lord of the rings has all of that too. The only thing that lord of the rings lacks is that, those three hours get a little bit boring at times. I don't know why, but i know i'm not the only one who feels that way. Day watch is three hours long too. After the movie, i went back to the ticket shop, and watched it again. That totals up to six hours of movie watching. And it wasn't boring even for a second. So why did i give it a nine? It suffers from the same thing the first movie suffered. The whole super power thing is not really explained, no one ever tells the audience how they work. You just have to live with it.