Almost in an effort to prove that vampiric tendencies and the battle between good and evil isn't just confined to Sunnydale or Los Angeles, the acclaimed Russian director, Timur Bekmambetov released Night Watch, a movie adaptation of the russian novel of the same name by Sergey Lukyanenko, and starring, amongst others, the popular russian actor, Konstantin Khabensky.
It is the first in a trilogy, the second in the series released in russian cinemas in early 2006, called Day Watch. However, it has not yet been released in the UK.
The plot goes something like this. Two types of "other" (vampires / shape-shifters etc. etc.) exist, the "lights" and the "darks", and a delicate truce exists between them (and has done for a while, blah blah). This truce is maintained by both the "night watch" and the "day watch", kind of good and bad police forces each ensuring the other side obeys the rules of the truce. However, the most powerful "other" ever conceived is born in Moscow, causing a flurry of activity to try and "recruit" this boy over to which ever side he chooses.
The film follows the exploits of a single member of the "night watch" (i.e. the "lights") as he tries to protect the boy from the various vampires and shape shifters that exist everywhere (as they do in reality of course).
The plot itself is definitely the "see the outcome coming a mile off" kind, but that doesn't detract. It's an excellent film, and one of those foreign films, like Crouching tiger, hidden dragon and House of flying daggers before it, that is better watched (and i've seen both versions now) with subtitles rather than the english language dubbing (unless you can speak fluent Russian of course, but I can't). That's not to say the dubbing is bad, however, it isn't.
All in all, an excellent addition to the vampire DVD collection, one which, I might add, only adds weight to my theory of "increased vampire attractiveness" (which I blogged about earlier), in this film, vampires are definitely stylish.
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