Nochnoi Dozor
October 7th, 2006Maybe spoilers here and there…
Nochnoi Dozor or Night Watch is the first part in a fantasy trilogy directed by Timur Bekmambetov. First, the critics call him a horror sci-fi fantasy thriller action movie, but I dont find horror (supernatural things yes, but no horror); I like this movie, a lot… not a big deal but what the hell. The story is interesting beyond the classic the last battle between good and evil line and theres some changes from the russian version to the american one.
Anton Gorodetsky (played by Konstantin Khabensky), a young man who comes to a witch (Rimma Markova) in her drab Soviet apartment building with a problem in 1992. Antons girlfriend Irina (Mariya Mironova) is leaving him, and he wants her back. The witch claims that Antons girl is pregnant with another man child. She offers to use black magic to force Irina to miscarry, but only if Anton accepts the bloodguilt for killing the unborn baby. During this episode, Anton discover his supernatural power for seeing glimpses of the future, and chooses to join the forces of good to atone for his sin.
In the russian version Anton dont have this glimpses power and we understand that the Others (day or night) not only includes witches, shapeshifters and vampires but another class of super-beings.
One of my favorite concepts is the Gloom, the space-in-between that only the Others can view (and enter). I think that this gloom is a kind of translation of the Bleed (the space between universes in Wildstorm comics created by Warren Ellis) to the human beigns.
Returning to this the last battle between good and evil line… oh my, thats a good one because the good guys arent so good, for example: Larisa character. Larisa is a mortal that the Night Watch, in a swap, allowed to be lured to the dark side. This compromise raises the question of whether the Night Watch are really fighting evil or just sacrificing innocents cynically.