Nightwatch

Herald rating: * *

Harry Potter 4, King Kong, and another blockbuster to come next week, so there had to be a slow week at the video stores, and this is it. Apart from some ho-hum family flicks, the most intriguing offering is this fantasy-thriller, not to be confused with Ewan McGregor's slightly less well-known Hollywood debut and Rembrandt's much better-known masterpiece of the same name.

Billed as Russia's answer to The Matrix, and sometimes as The Lord of the Rings meets The Matrix, Timur Bekmambetov's trilogy begins in 1342 when the Warriors of Light and the Warriors of Darkness battle on a bridge. Just when it's likely that both sides will take each other out, their leaders - Gesser and Vavulon - settle a truce.

The Light guys will run a Night Watch and ... yeah, you got it.

Fast-forward to Moscow 1992 when a boy, Yegor, threatens to upset the finely tuned balance, because he may be the oft-predicted Great One. Both sides want him; he is leaning towards the dark side. The lighter guys send Anton Gorodetsky to rescue Yegor, but Anton is a flawed hero who will have to fight his own demons along the way.

And that's pretty much it, apart from curses, black magic, amateur desktop surgery, vampires, rocket-powered vans, a light-sword, interesting filming techniques, oh, and it's in Russian with subtitles. But these are the coolest subtitles that swoop and loop around the screen and melt and change fonts and colours. Doubt they'll convince me to watch Parts 2 and 3 though.

* DVD, video rental today