It’s not often that a Russian movie makes it into multiplexes with expectations of Matrix sized business. But Night Watch, emboldened with hip celebrity endorsements (Quentin Tarantino, Danny Boyle, erm, Roman Abramovich) is quite unlike any Russian movie we’ve seen before. Quite unlike anything really. Indeed, it’s thoroughly discombobulating to attempt the coinage of an appropriate Paul Ross inspired cliché. It’s Lord Of The Rings but, like, with Luc Besson! No wait, it’s a post-Soviet Tarantino-derived Donnie Darko! Or is it Tarkovsky’s Blade on crystal meth? Harry Potter for goth-punks? We could go all night like this. Suffice to say, there’s never a dull moment in Mr. Bekmambetov’s wild and incredibly busy adaptation of Sergei Lukyaneko’s cult vampire fantasy.
An overture which sees a blistering slash-edit medieval battle between the forces of Light (shape-shifters, seers) and Darkness (blood-suckers, witches, people with bad teeth) quickly segues into an apocalyptic après Marx Moscow setting, where a centuries old truce between Good and Evil is disintegrating. As brooding hero Anton (Khabensky) skulks about on Night Watch (hence the title) for the forces of Light, vampires’ skulls are smashed like porcelain, cursed virgins summon the Rapture and spinal cords are removed for swordplay. And ye shall know the evil-doers by their Mafioso bling – Adidas mainly.
Thundering along toward a grandiose denouement, Bekmambetov shovels on the audacious set-pieces – we hurtle all the way down as a screw falls 40,000 feet from an aeroplane toward the ground and even the car-chases have vampire subplots. This relentlessly flashy, splashy chainsaw approach (even the subtitles bleed onscreen a la Tony Scott) forms just the sort of global, post-everything aesthetic one suspects will prompt Lenin to flip-flop in his tomb. Although, to be fair, the film makes terrific use of its still Stalinist backdrop in its posturing all-out assault on the senses.
Faint-hearted wallflowers would be well advised to stay away, but most everyone else should fall for Night Watch’s brutal charms. If it’s good enough for Jose Mourinho to give Chelsea the night off.