KEY POINTS:
Herald rating: * * * *
DAY WATCH
Cast: Konstantin Khabensky, Mariya Poroshina
Director: Timur Bekmambetov
Rating: R16 (horror, violence) Running time: 132 mins Screening: Academy Auckland Verdict: Sequel to Russian action-
fantasy box office smash outdoes its perplexing predecessor.
Night Watch, the first film in what is shaping up to be Russia's oddball answer to the Matrix trilogy, was mad, confusing and a little tedious with it - though those who ventured into the first chapter of the story about a wizard and vampire cold war between the forces of good and evil for the soul of humanity would have seen nothing quite like it before.
This second instalment might be a little too long for its own good and still be piling high all that mumbo-jumbo - much of the film is spent flashing back to ancient times where a Genghis Khan-like warrior is on a quest for the "chalk of fate" - but it sure keeps its storytelling wits about it better than the first, it's funnier and visually it's showing off some upgraded special effects.
Best shot: The sportscar handbrake slide across the glass front of a Moscow building. The sequel does keep some of the cooler visual trademarks from the first, like the hyperactive English subtitles.
Its set-up, about a tipping of the balance between underworld forces who have long kept each other in check, could be a comment on life in post-Soviet Russia and the sorry state of Moscow town-planning.
But there's not a lot of time for political contemplation when you're just trying to follow the complex characters. There is world-weary Night Watchman Anton (Khabensky), now partnered by the gifted Svetlana (Maria Poroshina), and whose superpowered son Egor (Dima Martynov) is in the clutches of dark leader Zavulon (Victor Verzhbitskiy) and may be about to upset the balance.
Add a sorceress or two, Anton switching bodies with a female colleague and a drunken birthday party as the setting for the big showdown and you've got a film that takes frequent leaps into the absurd.
It might be as baffling as Night Watch. But this second load of Russky sci-fi nonsense feels all the more inspired.
