Movie Reviews - new films reviewed

**** SPOILER WARNING *****
Over thousand years ago a battle between the Forces Of Light and the Forces Of Darkness ended in a truce - from this time on, humans should be free to decide for one side. Among humans, there live the Others - witches, shapeshifters, sorcerers, vampires. The truce and the balance between Light and Darkness is watched over by Others who decide for one side - the Night Watch are the forces of the Light who protect humankind from the Darkness. The Day Watch watches over the truce for the Darkness. A prophecy says that one day, an Other with great powers will come, who will join the Darkness and end the balance of the forces - and drive all humankind into Darkness.

Moscow - 12 years ago: Anton’s fiance has left him for another man, and he visits a witch who shall make her come back - and kill her unborn child. Anton takes full responsibility for this sin. When the Night Watch arrives just in time to stop and arrest the witch, Anton discovers he is an Other himself - he chooses the Light and becomes a member of the Night Watch himself.

Moscow - today: Anton (Konstantin Khabensky) is fighting vampires for the Night Watch and his newest task is to save a young boy, Yegor (Dmitry Martynov) from the vampires. What he does not know yet is that this boy is the Great Other who will fulfill the prophecy - and that this boy is his own son.

Hyped and praised by Quentin Tarantino and Danny Boyle, said to be the new ‘Lord Of The Rings’ or ‘Matrix’ there is a lot of expectations which are hard to live up to.
NIGHT WATCH is the first part of a trilogy, and it introduces a full new mythology which is never explained in detail and hard to grasp in every details for those who do not know the books.
The structure is episodic and a clear story arc is not in sight, but if you love your motion picture dark and stylish, you will find plenty of darkness and style here, together with a great soundtrack. Ultimately, this is a story about every human’s decision for good or evil, and it’s message is you have to take responsibility for your actions - like Anton, who has to pay the price for his attempted murder of his own unborn son - and with him, all of humankind may have to suffer for his sin.
It’s just too bad the movie is packed with so much style, characters and episodic subplots, but in the end fails to have a soul. So it’s not the great movie the hype wants you to believe it is, but if you liked the MATRIX and KILL BILL, you may also like this one - and there’s always the hope the next part of the trilogy might be even better than this one.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 29th, 2005 at 4:06 pm and is filed under 3-star-movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.