I saw the trailer for this Russian fantasy a while back, and thought it looked spectacular. That trailer, as it turns out, wasn't misleading - the film is a visually dazzling, hyper-kinetic, frequently chiaroscuro plate of careening vehicles, messy, stumbling fights, apocalyptic explosions, striking set pieces, and unremitting gloom.
The mythos is set up early - light against dark in An Eternal Struggle - and the plotting and pacing, while unflagging, is a bit of a mess, but what distinguishes Night Watch is primarily its look, which carries through in the sets, the lighting, the actors. There's also some inventive camera work - the following of the path of the screw from the aeroplane overhead, for example (not the only sequence which reminded me a bit of Jeunet's work - and especially The City of Lost Children - although, overall, a better reference point might be a grittier and more visceral Underworld; it has a sort of indie feel - stemming, perhaps, from its being made outside the Hollywood system - and a related sense of dirt under its fingernails and, at times, menace that is the realer for not being as slick as much that we see on screen).
As I said before, it's really a bit of a mess, trying to cram in far too much and doing so very unevenly, and as such not all that satisfying. (The ending in particular falls in a heap - in part because Night Watch is the first in a projected epic trilogy.) But it's striking enough that, in many ways, that doesn't matter - though my sense of the whole is of a jumbled cacophony, individual images and scenes stand out. (The most memorable sequence is Anton's gasping, desperate struggle with the vampire early on in the abandoned warehouse - in an inversion of the usual belief, the vampire is only visible in the mirror, forcing Anton to first conduct the fight while standing in front of a large, wall-mounted mirror, lunging wildly at his lurking assailant, then, once the mirror is shattered, rely on a broken fragment held in his hand, against his face.) This film intrigued me, and if the next two get made, I'll try to watch them.
