film | From Russia with blood

The main lesson gleaned from NIGHT WATCH [NOCHNOY DOZOR]: Don't judge a foreign-language cinematic fantasia by its groaningly silly prologue. This 2004 Russian blockbuster, the first installment in a planned film trilogy culled from a cult novel by sci-fi author Sergei Lukyanenko, begins seven centuries ago in a supernatural earth realm known as "the Gloom," where warriors on the opposing sides of Light and Darkness — whatever that means — meet on a bridge for the kind of apocalyptic showdown you used to see on Buffy every Tuesday evening, then call a truce in the midst of their bloody skirmish. The conditions: The Warriors of Light will maintain a Night Watch to keep tabs on the Warriors of Darkness, who, in turn, institute a Day Watch to eyeball the Warriors of Light. Ominous narration informs us that:

... So it will be, until a man emerges who is meant to become the great one. And if he chooses the Side of Light, then Light will win. But those to whom the truth has been revealed say that he will choose Darkness, for it is easier to kill the Light within oneself than to scatter the Darkness around.

Uh-huh.

And then, just as Night Watch starts to seem like Keanu Reeves' stinky Constantine doused in a six-pack of Red Bull and a few quarts of Rikaloff, the weirdest thing happens: The movie begins to crackle in spite of its byzantine mythology — an episodic hodgepodge of elements from Ghostbusters, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, The Matrix and Men in Black — thanks to the gorgeously neon-grunge visual juice of director/co-writer Timur Bekmambetov and cinematographer Sergei Trofimov. Seriously. As the story cuts to a contemporary setting, and a brooding seer (Konstantin Khabensky) on the Night Watch payroll investigates a non-stop glut of end-of-the-world phenomena, even the English subtitles get in on the razzle-dazzle, occasionally taking the form of dimensional lit-mag tone poetry as they pass behind the actors, dissolve in water, or enlarge and scatter when the dialogue grows frenetic. And right there's the rub: Night Watch is such a kinetic triumph of mood and style that you never quite mind it's also a load of muddled good-vs.-evil mumbo-jumbo. B-