Film Reviews

Day Watch

• Rating:
• Director: Timur Bekmambetov.
• Starring: Konstantin Khabensky, Mariya Poroshina, Viktor Verzhbitsky, Dmitry Martynov.
• Details: Russia / 132mins (15A)

With my scalp having just recovered from the amount of head scratching I did while watching Bekmambetov's ambitious but flawed fantasy-sci-fi-action-thriller-comedy Night Watch, I wasn't looking forward to the sequel. Thankfully there's a bring-you-up-to-speed prologue, but any hope of staying with the madcap story soon evaporates, as more and more information is piled on before anyone has a chance to absorb it. Equally as impenetrable as its predecessor, Day Watch takes up where Night Watch left off: the truce between the forces of light and dark is becoming increasingly edgy. Anton (Khabensky) is training in an 'other'; the naive Svetlana (Poroshina) could be the Night Watch's (the good guys) last hope to defeat Day Watch's (the bad guys) leader Zavulon (Verzhbitsky). The Chalk Of Fate, discovered in northern Iran thousands of years ago, could be the key to victory, but Anton's son Yegor (Martynov), who joined the Day Watch in Night Watch, proves to be the fly in the ointment. Squeezing elements of Lord Of The Rings, The Matrix, Star Wars and the forgotten '80s cult TV show Manimal, Bekmambetov's vision has too much story, even when spread over three parts (Twilight Watch is on its way). It's stylish (nifty subtitles), fun (the director even has time for a Vice Versa-esque body switch sub plot) and has some innovative action sequences - but on the whole, it's incomprehensible nonsense.

Review by Gavin Burke