Night Watch is a must watch (ugghhhh)
Night Watch
Year: 2006
Director: Timur Bekmambetov
Length: 114 minutes
Media: DVD
Studio: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
Rating from : Suitable for 15 years and over
ID in Amazon.com: B000CCB8ES
Rating: out of 5
What can I say? Simply that this is one of the coolest film I’ve seen in a long time. Despite the obvious The Matrix (the first one) comparisons the film invites, this is in a league of its own. I loved it. My only complaint is that it is very obviously the first in more to come (a trilogy, actually) and so doesn’t feel as self-contained as it might. But there was self-containment enough, the events we witness at the beginning (just after the prologue) end up having their inexorable consequences, and our hapless hero Anton is left with what can only be described as a very Russian price to pay for his former actions. Just amazing. Worth watching over and over.
June 29th, 2006 at 8:48 am
Presumably this is the film of Sergei Lukyanenko’s (http://www.rusf.ru/lukian/) book, yes? Is the film in Russian with subtitles, in which case I might get this.
Ivan
June 29th, 2006 at 10:54 am
Yes, that’s right Ivan. It is the film of Sergei Lukyanenko’s novel. The version I rented was Russian with English subtitles, and I’m fairly certain that’s the version I’ve linked to on Amazon. Amusingly, the back of the rental box from my local independent DVD place has this note on the back: “To view this DVD with subtitles you must use the “English for the hearing impaired” setting in the Subtitle section. Also select “РУССКИЙ” in order for it to remain in Russian language. Just to add to the confusion, the film actually begins in English and then reverts to Russian. Nobody knows why. I’ve been to Russia a few times and it’s a bit like that …”
June 29th, 2006 at 11:27 am
Excellent. I’ll get it.
September 14th, 2006 at 8:07 am
Just read the book. Starts off v. good, but:
(a) the book is really three stories, each having the feel (length, suspense, resolution) of an episode in a TV series. This means the usual fizzling out about halfway through that I get in most modern genre stuff (by the time the hero is exclaiming, “of course! How could I have been so stupid!! It could only have been …”, I couldn’t give a shit) is repeated three times. In fact I could barely drag myself through the third story at all. Something about writing in a book of destiny.
(b) Lukyanenko has the moral engagement one has come to expect from Russian science fiction (ahem), but the light/dark truce has a slightly dated cold war feel to it.
Having said all that I’ll still get the film. It’s a shame Tarkovsky is no longer with us. Do the actors all mumble indistinctly with their backs to the camera? That’s what I /call/ method acting.
I
September 14th, 2006 at 8:26 am
Dude stop wasing time reading the book and watch the bloody film! And yeah Tarkovsky would have totally been the right director. Heh.
I stlll haven’t discovered when the second movie is coming out in the UK. (It came out in Russia at the beginning of the year.)