Day Watch

Director: Timur Bekmabetov

Starring: Konstantin Khabensky, Mariya Poroshina, Vladimir Menshov

Day Watch is the story of a foot soldier, Anton (Khabensky), in the epic struggle between Light and Dark. After the events of Night Watch, the first film in the series, Moscow is recovering after a near-apocalypse, and Anton is simultaneously trying to rescue his son from the clutches of the Dark, and keep the truce with them stable. When Dark Others start dying mysteriously, Anton must try and escape their vengeance and prevent another disaster.

Playing interestingly with concepts of good and evil, and what must be done in the name of keeping balance, Day Watch is an astonishing film both in terms of looks and cinematic achievement. Looking like the hybrid lovechild of The Matrix and the Bourne films, Day Watch combines heady elements of nail-biting horror with utterly astounding special effects – created with a budget many times smaller than even an average Hollywood thriller of the same calibre ($4.2 million).

The director and his cast appear to have so much fun destroying Moscow in the same way Godzilla destroys New York, that you’ll find yourself skipping over any confusing plot points (of which there will be a few). Had he been given Hollywood-scale funds, one wonders what Bekmabetov would have done with this film, but as it is, the preposterously entertaining set-pieces and slightly overblown plot – the finding of a piece of chalk that can re-write time is of considerably more importance to the camera than a young boy’s inexorable slip-slide towards evil – is tempered by a sardonic, and very Russian, attitude towards the end of the world.

Not with a whimper, but with a bang. And a lot of blood.

Marcus Kelly