Day Watch (2006)

Ironically, there is something kind of impressive about the sheer sloppiness of Day Watch (sequel to Night Watch) I would never have thought it possible for a fictional movie to be this big a wreck and still allow me to follow the plot (but barely) Day Watch is ridiculously demanding of an audience members attention and it doesn't give us anything in return. There are no thrills/chills, scares or visual splendour, but there are a few laughs.

Day Watch collapses under the weight of too much content and not enough legitimate story. Regardless of whether this is a noble adaptation of the novel, it cheats a movie goer out of a good time. I approached Day Watch hoping it would enrich the story of Night Watch, which had a cliffhanger ending. What I saw is a completely different ballgame. All the same faces are back but the performance quality is so dreadful that these feel like new people. The ending is the kind that makes the whole thing seem pointless, and by the whole thing I also mean the plot of Night Watch.

How ever much you may have loved the first, is not gonna be enough to make Day Watch a worthy investment of time. This sloppy, overlong enterprise is in desperate need of a redo.

Fmovies: My first piece of advice before watching this film would be to make sure you see Night Watch first. This certainly isn't a trilogy that you could watch out of sequence.

But for those willing to start at the beginning this is one of the most rewarding pieces of cinema you'll ever see. The CG is awesome, the acting first class and the direction of Timur Bekmambetov is breathtaking (a point not lost on Hollywood with him signing up to direct his first English language film).

The ending of the first film is taken a step further and knitted together beautifully with the second, keeping you gripped with questions and answers from start to finish. In fact the pace was so good I barely noticed the fact that it was 3 hours long.

The only things that confuse me about this film is where can they possibly go with Dusk Watch..... and could it be even better.

Let me say first and foremost do not even think of viewing this movie unless you've seen the first film. Simply put this movie just starts and goes, assuming that you've seen the first film. There are no reintroductions, just forward motion so be prepared, see Nightwatch.

Picking up some time after Night Watch ends this film concerns two parallel stories Anton's search for a means of righting all that has gone wrong since he joined the Watch, and his framing for the murder of one of the Day Watch. The two things are not of course, that far apart as everyone soon finds out.

This is epic story telling and it covers a great deal of ground. Do not blink or go to the bathroom with out being able to pause this since this moves like the wind. Unfortunately even with close attention a good deal of the plot is going to be clouded. There are lots of characters, lots of plot points many carried over from the first film (which in retrospect I should have watched before I dove into this film). You can fee the film's origins as a novel bleeding off the screen giving this version of Moscow a very real sense of place.

The action and craftsmanship of this film is almost without equal. The set pieces are spectacular, there are things in this movie to make your jaw drop open (the influx of American money can be seen on the screen in sequences that top the first film). The cast is amazing, creating some really good guys and some vile bad ones. Its first rate all around.

I really did like this film a great deal, though I am a tad disappointed. I don't know whether its the fact that the story is too big for its two and a half running time, or if its the fact that it doesn't go where I expected it to go. I think I'm going to have to see it again, preferably when I can see this not long after the first film.

If you saw and liked the first film see this. If you weren't crazy about the first film you may want to try it. If you haven't seen the first film see that first.

Day Watch fmovies. After reading the book trilogy I was looking forward to these movies. As in any adaptation, not everything makes it the screen. The movie was OK, I like the supernatural subject matter so I was able to stomach watching the whole movie. What drove me crazy is the translation!!!! I speak Russian and the subtitles were totally off. I understand that some things don't translate literally but in some parts the subtitles had nothing to do with the words that the actors spoke. If anyone is in the industry, can you please enlighten us on the process of how the subtitles come about??? Do the people at FOX think that there will be no Russian speaking people watching the movie?

Day watch manages to be something none of those Hollywood sci-fi saga type movies never could. It combines EVERYTHING in itself. Action, drama, suspense, CGI that's definitely better, and more believable, than in any of the matrix movies, a very intricate plot, that you have to follow carefully throughout the movie, wonderful acting and great dialogs. Well you'd say, lord of the rings has all of that too. The only thing that lord of the rings lacks is that, those three hours get a little bit boring at times. I don't know why, but i know i'm not the only one who feels that way. Day watch is three hours long too. After the movie, i went back to the ticket shop, and watched it again. That totals up to six hours of movie watching. And it wasn't boring even for a second. So why did i give it a nine? It suffers from the same thing the first movie suffered. The whole super power thing is not really explained, no one ever tells the audience how they work. You just have to live with it.

Generally, sequels are inferior to their parent counterparts. However, this is one of those great times when the sequel surpasses the quality of the first and stands on it's own bearings. The plot line was well written and the acting was absolutely fantastic! Watching in the native language with the subtitles merely added to the essence of the story.

GO SEE THIS MOVIE!

But, if you have read the books these movies are based on, please do not compare. It's as if Lukanyenko decided, "This is how I wanted it as a book, but it should be this way for the movie." They are basically separate entities. Yet, both extremely satisfying. You will not walk out of the movie saying, "The book was better than the movie," because you simply cannot equate the two. And if you haven't read the books. READ THEM! It is very interesting to see the absolute contrast of the author's ideas on paper and on film.