Day Watch (Nochnoy Dozor 2) (2007) Movie Information:

Day Watch (Nochnoy Dozor 2) (2007) Directed by: Timur Bekmambetov Day Watch (Nochnoy Dozor 2) (2007) Written by: Timur Bekmambetov Day Watch (Nochnoy Dozor 2) (2007) Cast: Konstantin Khabensky, Aleksei Chadov, Yuri Kutsenko, Igor Lifanov, Sergei Lukyanenko, Rimma Markova, Vladimir Menshov, Nikolai Olyalin, Mariya Poroshina, Galina Tyunina, Viktor Verzhbitsky, Valeri Zolotukhin

Day Watch (Nochnoy Dozor 2) (2007) U.S. Distributor: Fox Searchlight Pictures Day Watch (Nochnoy Dozor 2) (2007) U.K. Distributor: Fox Searchlight Pictures

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Day Watch (Nochnoy Dozor 2) (2007) Synopsis:

"Day Watch (Nochnoi Dozor 2)" is the second installment of a trilogy based on the best-selling sci-fi novels of Sergei Lukyanenko entitled Night Watch, Day Watch and Dusk Watch.

Day Watch (Nochnoy Dozor 2) (2007) Movie Review:

Bekmambetov returns for Part 2 of novelist Lukyanenko's otherworldly trilogy. This carries on straight from NIGHT WATCH (2004), maintaining the epic scale and extremely strong characters, even if it's also somewhat self-indulgent.

Night Watch officer Anton (Khabensky) is struggling with the fact that his son Yegor (Martynov) chose to join Day Watch, forces of darkness standing against the light to maintain a thousand-year-old truce. And he's also annoyed that his new protégé Sveta (Poroshina) is more adept at his own job. The thing is: Sveta and Yegor are actually Great Others, and one clash between them will destroy the truce, unleashing all-out war between vampires, witches and the like. So when the Day Watch boss (Verzhbitsky) frames Anton for a crime, his boss (Menshov) must fight to maintain the balance.

Much of this was shot alongside the first film, so it maintains the same whizzy visual style. Made completely in Russia, it looks nothing like Western blockbusters, although there are echoes of inventive films like The Matrix and Underworld. Bekmambetov has loads of surprises up his sleeve, from the brilliant look of the Gloom, the parallel dimension where Others can fight, to the witty use of subtitles.

And the characters get just as much attention as the imagery. We feel Anton's pain as he is torn between the two people he loves. And this emotion gives the film a wonderfully moody, atmospheric tone that combines wit with creepiness. Especially when Anton swaps bodies with one of his colleagues (Tyunina) to go into hiding: "I feel like a tranny!" And it shifts even darker with the prospect of full-on ethnic cleansing if the truce is broken.

This is one episode of an epic tale, and as a middle chapter it's incomprehensible without seeing Part 1. It's also over-long and a bit too conclusive. Several scenes could've been shortened or deleted entirely, and a few effects sequences revel in their cleverness, grinding the story to a halt as we just sit and watch. Even so, it's great to see a big-scale movie that's completely independent of Hollywood meddling. So here's hoping that Dusk Watch is on its way.

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Day Watch (Nochnoy Dozor 2) (2007) review written by: Rich Cline