Theatrical Review of Day Watch

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According to legend, two great armies fought to a standstill on a bridge. Their leaders, Gesser and Zavulon, forged a truce which would survive the generations: neither side could actively recruit members to their side and both groups would watch each other to maintain the truce. These sides, Day Watch and Night Watch, remain in Russia to this day.

Such is the backstory for "Day Watch," the second film in a trilogy based on Sergei Lukyanenko´s novels. Actually, that exposition takes place in "Night Watch" (the first film), yet it is rehashed at the beginning of this entry. And for anyone who missed the first film in it´s entirety, "Day Watch" handily recaps where we´ve been before. Still fuming at the loss of his son Yegor to Zavulon, Anton has fully embraced his role with Day Watch. He is also training a recruit thought to be a the Great Other, a woman who will tip the balance of the war end it forever. However, Svetlana and Yegor can never meet, or else the apocalypse will rain down on the Earth. It may be inevitable, when Anton is framed for murder and Zavulon is bent on bringing him to justice.

There are a lot of similarities between both installments in this trilogy, not all of them positive. First and foremost, the entire cast from the first film return to reprise their roles, as do the creative talent. This simple fact helps the in-story continuity tremendously, especially in the misguided second act. If a story ever goes off the rails, the actors should know the characters well enough to sell the events to the audience, as insane as they may seem.

For example, in order to protect Anton from justice, Gesser switches his body with fellow Night Watcher Olga. Of course, Anton-in-Olga stays with Svetlana…whom Anton has a crush on. So, for twenty minutes in the middle of a movie about vampires, the supernatural and the end of the world, we get slapstick comedy about a man learning how to be a woman. He forgets to go in the "right" bathroom! He has a hard time walking in heels! He can´t keep his eyes off of Svetlana in the shower! Please, this is borderline offensive and hardly relevant to the story. Moreover, how many times have we seen this type of plotline? It´s never done right or to anyone´s satisfaction. Honestly, the only reason this sub-plot is included is to pad the run time. Without it, the film would be a full twenty minutes shorter. (As it is, "Day Watch" clocks in at 132 minutes.)

"Night Watch" suffered the same fate with a wholly uninteresting and nearly coma-inducing second act. What it doesn´t have, though, is the Chalk of Fate. Yes, stop laughing. I did say the Chalk of Fate. Apparently, whomever holds the chalk is able to write down whatever they want and it comes true. There´s another flashback to olden times where a conqueror is killed, only to come back to life with the use of the chalk. And the chalk is the great maguffin in "Day Watch," the object everyone has their attention on while they should be looking somewhere else. It seems as though with the competing plotline of Svetlana vs. Yegor, Yegor vs. Anton and the general good vs. evil, everyone forgot about the chalk. It makes appearances throughout the story, but it isn´t the focus of any one person. It speaks to the lack of a unifying force behind the film as well, or, at least the feeling of no unifying force.

That one person who could bring "Day Watch" together would have also foreseen the des ex machina rubbing audiences the wrong way. I´ll allow for the script adhering to the original novel and that this is the second part of a three part story. But what we get here is nothing short of scandalous and, before seeing the next film, sloppy. It´s called a reset button and fans have howled for ages about a situation being reset to square one through magic or technology. In this case, it´s the Chalk of Fate.

And let´s talk about the grand battle which ends the film for just a minute. One word describes it: anticlimactic. Maybe we´re spoiled with American movies which pull out all the stops and deliver the slam-bang end battle built up and teased for the entire film. "Day Watch" threatens the apocalypse if Svetlana and Yegor meet; without spoiling what actually happens, let me just say by this point, we´re just wishing for the movie to wrap up. Cut to black, the projector to break, the production running out of money…just end "Day Watch." This isn´t the apocalypse we´ve all been led to believe is coming.

Suffice to say that when some of the more unfavorable elements of the first film got carried over, small touches were also brought forward, lending as added sense of continuity to "Day Watch." For instance, since this is a Russian language film, subtitles are mandatory. These subtitles appear on the screen like they normally would. Some words and whole sentences, though, disappear from the screen in unconventional fashion. Sometimes a word disappears before the words around it; other times, a phrase turns a certain color. It all depends on what is happening inside that particular scene. This is a case of style over substance, no doubt, but most appreciated.

Like a whole host of other films, "Day Watch" simply sits on the screen, putting its characters through their paces, valiantly trying to keep the narrative running smoothly despite any number of ways it could turn into a mess. And it succeeds in that regard, at the very least. A straight forward plot which doesn´t try to pull the rug out from under the audience and several nods to the original film (like the Dark Witch and the return of Anton´s neighbors) all try to lift yet another supernatural film out of the shadows and into the light.

They don´t succeed.

"Day Watch," on the scale of 1 to 10, rates a 5. Competently produced and more polished than an American would expect a Russian film to look, the script lets down the entire production. Reign in the comedy aspects in the second act, loose those twenty minutes and this could be a great trilogy of foreign films for American audiences. As is? The middle will make everybody laugh…and, for once, that´s not a good thing.

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