Don't Believe the Hype

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

I saw this in the theater when it first came out. So that might be the reason I love it so much. It was an amazing theater experience. I ended up purchasing this film, the sequel (Day Watch: which is just as good as Night Watch), & the novels. I would suggest watching Night Watch & Day Watch together. They are really perfect as one whole story. I am a huge horror/fantasy/sci-fi fan boy.......This is a stellar movie regardless of my preference, but having love for this genre really does elevate the material. Great story, great cast, & beautifully made. Even to this day, the look & feel of the film is on point. Please Enjoy!! I highly recommend this with the sequel Day Watch.............

Night Watch is one of those movies that teeters on the border of the horror genre and overlaps into fantasy or sci-fi. It is one of those rare movies where the cgi is actually a benefit. The dark imagery and sleek style alone make this film distinct. Even the subtitles are animated with such care that I was blown away by the attention to overall detail. In this respect, the subsequent Day Watch really dropped the ball. The story in Night Watch is complex and layered such that you can almost justify alternate meanings to the plot. Here I saw parallel universes where the past is ongoing aligned with the present. Adding to the mood of the film was the beautiful Russian dialect. Never watch a dubbed film. It ruins the essence entirely. The direction was eloquent and flowed like paint on canvas, the acting was believable, lighting was adequate, coloration was intense, there was constant movement, and the cgi was visually stunning. This is one of my favorite films and I have only seen the version mass marketed to the US. I understand there is a superior version marketed abroad.

Night Watch seems to be one of those love it or hate it films, and it is easy to see why. For this viewer, it has a fair bit to redeem it but has too many flaws as well to make it good enough, very similar pros and cons for 2007's Wolfhound actually. Night Watch is an excellently made film, the scenery is sumptuous with a dark edge as well, the CGI is well-defined and used appropriately and most of the photography is skilfully done. The music score is terrific as well, it has some beautiful parts, some stirring parts and some haunting parts, and these are used in a way that is effective for each scene and doesn't across as repetitive or jarring. The acting is also quite good, Konstantin Khabensky's lead performance in particular is great and the supporting do a good job in making the most of what they have. The script is a mix here, some of it is literate and thoughtful but there are too many other instances where it sounds awkward and underwritten. Most of the photography is fine, but that is not the case with the action sequences where it is very claustrophobic-feeling and too much like watching a hurriedly-edited music video. The action doesn't really have as much drive or tension as it ought to, it's performed competently but rather stodgily choreographed. The characters are sketched very thinly, we know what types of characters they are but often that's pretty much it. The story is the biggest problem with Night Watch, a good idea but the storytelling is far too rushed and confused with too many things left unexplained or underdeveloped. If the pace had slowed down, things would have been more comprehensible, less choppy and better developed. While the ending is also a let down, it was here where Night Watch felt the most rushed and it felt unfinished and anti-climatic too. Overall, a mixed bag here and this is coming from a Russian fantasy fanatic who hasn't read the book(and you don't necessarily have had to to either like or dislike the film) and judged Night Watch on its own terms. 5/10 Bethany Cox

This movie was incredibly ridiculous and way Over-the-Top.In all the scenes from "Night Watch", there was something incredibly weird happening, and those weird things were presented in the cheesiest manner that somebody could imagine. And of course, none of those scenes made sense, being mostly a poorly written mess which combines in an awful way several elements from other stories and films (Such as "Underworld", "The Matrix", "Van Helsing", "The Lord of the Rings", "Harry Potter" and even "Ghostbusters") but without any kind of interesting value, being both muddled and idiotic.I never read the book in which this was inspired, so I couldn't make a comparison between the two, but all what I can say that this is one of the dumbest movies that I've seen in my life. And yet, it is not even entertaining.The only redeeming quality of this film were a couple of visually interesting scenes, but that's it. I didn't care at all about the story and the characters from this movie (Which were mostly a bunch of tired clichés anyway)This movie was complete mess from beginning to end.