Day Watch (**1/2)

This is yet another sequel to a blockbuster special-effects extravaganza to open in the summer of 2007. If you haven’t heard of it, that’s because Night Watch was a Russian hit that saw only limited release in the US. This is part two of a planned trilogy, adapted by director Timur Bekmambetov from novels by Sergei Lukyanenko, that envisions a Moscow where powerful humans called “Others” live alongside ordinary folks. Divided into Light and Dark Others, they’ve maintained an uneasy peace for a thousand years partly maintained by a special law enforcement branch that keeps Dark Others from staging vampiric attacks when the Lights are in control. This and more is explained in an English-language voiceover that I would have replayed had I been watching the DVD. (I wish the Pirates of the Caribbean and Lord of the Rings producers had been kind enough to supply such summaries.) The main character, Anton (Konstantin Khabensky), is an enforcement agent whose new trainee (Mariya Poroshina) proves to be unusually skilled. She’s also a potential love interest. Anton’s asked to hide some evidence to protect one of the intruders, but winds up in trouble himself. That’s the short version of the plot. I’d tell you the long version if only I’d been able to follow it.

Those not burdened by the need to be able to follow everything that’s happening will find a visually compelling world with a knock-your-socks-off finale to equal most any Hollywood blockbuster. Part police procedural, part alternate-universe fantasy, and part horror-thriller, with a bit of off-kilter humor in the mix, Day Watch is very mainstream. The characters have a lot of history, but little depth, and, apparently unlike the novels, moral ambiguities are in short supply. But you can see why Day Watch, like its predecessor, set Russia’s all-time box-office record in 2006. This is not only because of the special effects and the industrial-rock-scored action sequences, but because of the complete alternate universe imagined by its creators. (I didn’t understand all of the rules of this world, but it’s clear that Bekmambetov did, and presumably all is explained in the novels.) No doubt Russian geeks have spent as many hours dissecting these movies as, say, The Matrix.

In addition to the altered voiceover, the subtitles in the English-language version are also worth commenting on. As with Night Watch, they don’t merely translate, but add to the atmosphere, shuddering along with the image when Anton tries to exceed his powers by entering the “second level of gloom,” turning red when blood is mentioned, and so on. The business about the different levels is just one of the ideas the movie introduces but has no time to develop. I haven’t even mentioned most of the characters, the Great Others who could bring about the end of the truce, or the Chalk of Fate, an ancient object of Asian provenance with the power to change history. This isn’t the sort of movie I tend to enjoy, with a confusing plot revolving around supernatural powers, but I admire the scope of Bekmambetov’s ambitions.

IMDB link