I'm doing this for the first time and my English is not as good as I wish it should be, but I will try my best. While I will avoid spoilers, I think this mini review might be interesting only to those people who have seen the first movie.
Yesterday I got to see Day Watch, a sequel to the very popular russian action/fantasy film "Night Watch" and overall I think it was not bad. My biggest problem with the first movie was that the story was too messy and all over the place. One storyline ended too soon, one too late and the way director Timur Bekmambetov put it all together gave me an impression that he didn't treat it like a whole movie, but a series of wild scenes to show off his MTV-type visual skills.
Fortunately, "Day Watch" is a lot more focused storywise and most of it actually makes sense. It might be a more traditional kind of "good vs. bad" story, but it works, because I never got confused for wrong reasons. The movie is still obessed with ripping off Hollywood visual tricks (bullet time and others ), but it's mostly used for humorous effect. And speaking of humor, I should point out that it is as funny if not funnier than the first part, because Bekmambetov is not afraid to make fun of everything - he is a very good observer of modern russian society. While I'm not Russian, I've been in Moscow and know them and their quirks pretty well so I got most of the jokes, but I'm afraid that western audiences might miss most of them. Unless the studio works hard on a translation.
As an action movie, It works only partially. First of all, it uses an annoying trick that nowadays only Uwe Boll is so fond of - every action scene is made more "exciting" with a use of repetitive drum n' bass music. Perhaps it's also used for a comic effect, but I didn't get it then. Also, it's clear that they had a bigger budget so throughout the movie we are treated with rather big scale action scenes, but problem is that director never finds a satisfying way of finishing them - no payoff, just a cut to another scene. And because there's so much action in the film, they really had to have a HUGE climax scene to finish the movie, but unfortunately it never happens so it felt anti-climatic.
So, overall, I think it was an OK movie, nothing more or less. If you loved Night Watch, then you will probably really love this one.
Yesterday I got to see Day Watch, a sequel to the very popular russian action/fantasy film "Night Watch" and overall I think it was not bad. My biggest problem with the first movie was that the story was too messy and all over the place. One storyline ended too soon, one too late and the way director Timur Bekmambetov put it all together gave me an impression that he didn't treat it like a whole movie, but a series of wild scenes to show off his MTV-type visual skills.
Fortunately, "Day Watch" is a lot more focused storywise and most of it actually makes sense. It might be a more traditional kind of "good vs. bad" story, but it works, because I never got confused for wrong reasons. The movie is still obessed with ripping off Hollywood visual tricks (bullet time and others ), but it's mostly used for humorous effect. And speaking of humor, I should point out that it is as funny if not funnier than the first part, because Bekmambetov is not afraid to make fun of everything - he is a very good observer of modern russian society. While I'm not Russian, I've been in Moscow and know them and their quirks pretty well so I got most of the jokes, but I'm afraid that western audiences might miss most of them. Unless the studio works hard on a translation.
As an action movie, It works only partially. First of all, it uses an annoying trick that nowadays only Uwe Boll is so fond of - every action scene is made more "exciting" with a use of repetitive drum n' bass music. Perhaps it's also used for a comic effect, but I didn't get it then. Also, it's clear that they had a bigger budget so throughout the movie we are treated with rather big scale action scenes, but problem is that director never finds a satisfying way of finishing them - no payoff, just a cut to another scene. And because there's so much action in the film, they really had to have a HUGE climax scene to finish the movie, but unfortunately it never happens so it felt anti-climatic.
So, overall, I think it was an OK movie, nothing more or less. If you loved Night Watch, then you will probably really love this one.
