Damn, reading all those positive comments, I really wonder if I saw the same movie.
Let me first start off with telling you that I was really astonished by the first movie, "Night Watch". Sure, it had its flaws, but still, it looked great, it was refreshingly original and most of all - it was atmospheric. To sum it up in a short statement: It left me longing for more.
Then I watched the sequel, "Day Watch", and I just didn't get it... all I could think was: God damnit, what the hell went wrong there? "Day Watch" was nothing but flaws. The worst problem of it is probably that it has one of the worst scripts I came around in a long time... there's simply no point to it (and no, it's not that I wouldn't have understood it). And what is so bad about that is the fact that it not only gives not a damn about the novels it should be supposed to be based on - it also totally ignores its predecessor. I've somewhere read that after Fox bought the rights to it, they urged the whole story into an early termination. As a result, "Day Watch" is just a total mess.
Part one succeeded in establishing a dark, aggrieving setting with more or less strong characters and ended with a bunch of prophecies that really pronounced some major threats to come in part two... But honestly, guys, what DO we have there? It's a huge mess of story lines (some finished, some not) that really do not help to advance the plot in the slightest. The characters are reduced to bystanders (like Bear) in the best case and to total clowns in the worst (hey, what exactly does Anton do in the last hour of the movies? He totters around drunk... what happens to Olga? What happened to the threatening presence of Zavulon? And, damn, why does Yegor never show any sign of becoming the great, fate-turning wizard that he's foretold to become?) Other characters get way too much screen-time, only to get an opportunity to establish a goofy romance or show some flesh... and what's the parrot guy doing in it anyway??? It is A TERRIBLY SCRIPTED MOVIE. Face it. The apocalypse is the result of a toy-ran-amok? It's not what I expected. Definitely not.
What's maybe the worst thing for me is that there are certain signs that point to all this having happened on purpose. There are at least two scenes (shower, anyone?) that are so horribly cheesy that there's actually only one word to describe it: Camp. Now, I certainly can take a little bit of camp once in a while, and I also did like the humor in some of the scenes in part one (and you could even argue if there were not some camp aspects in that as well) - but all in all, "Night Watch" was more or less serious in it's tone. "Day Watch" is not camp in the clever sense - it's just goofy. It's not fun. It's out of place there, I think.
In fact, I thought the movie was so different from part one - and sadly, in all the wrong points - that I asked myself how it was possible to send it all down the gutter like that. I thought that maybe the studio or the director got in a fight over something and either one of them tried to pay it back in that way to the other, or that somebody lost a bet or so there, or... I really don't know. I just can't understand it. And also can't understand why they more or less had it end in a way that there's no sense in really making a part 3 anymore... Guess that's the only good thing I can say about it: After that disaster, I'm actually glad that there maybe will be no movie to follow.
(And even if I have to disappoint all you Slavophil guys out there who are just proud to finally have a cool movie you can show to foreign audiences: Good special effects and the state as a sequel to a good movie doesn't make this a good movie. I'm afraid so.)
Let me first start off with telling you that I was really astonished by the first movie, "Night Watch". Sure, it had its flaws, but still, it looked great, it was refreshingly original and most of all - it was atmospheric. To sum it up in a short statement: It left me longing for more.
Then I watched the sequel, "Day Watch", and I just didn't get it... all I could think was: God damnit, what the hell went wrong there? "Day Watch" was nothing but flaws. The worst problem of it is probably that it has one of the worst scripts I came around in a long time... there's simply no point to it (and no, it's not that I wouldn't have understood it). And what is so bad about that is the fact that it not only gives not a damn about the novels it should be supposed to be based on - it also totally ignores its predecessor. I've somewhere read that after Fox bought the rights to it, they urged the whole story into an early termination. As a result, "Day Watch" is just a total mess.
Part one succeeded in establishing a dark, aggrieving setting with more or less strong characters and ended with a bunch of prophecies that really pronounced some major threats to come in part two... But honestly, guys, what DO we have there? It's a huge mess of story lines (some finished, some not) that really do not help to advance the plot in the slightest. The characters are reduced to bystanders (like Bear) in the best case and to total clowns in the worst (hey, what exactly does Anton do in the last hour of the movies? He totters around drunk... what happens to Olga? What happened to the threatening presence of Zavulon? And, damn, why does Yegor never show any sign of becoming the great, fate-turning wizard that he's foretold to become?) Other characters get way too much screen-time, only to get an opportunity to establish a goofy romance or show some flesh... and what's the parrot guy doing in it anyway??? It is A TERRIBLY SCRIPTED MOVIE. Face it. The apocalypse is the result of a toy-ran-amok? It's not what I expected. Definitely not.
What's maybe the worst thing for me is that there are certain signs that point to all this having happened on purpose. There are at least two scenes (shower, anyone?) that are so horribly cheesy that there's actually only one word to describe it: Camp. Now, I certainly can take a little bit of camp once in a while, and I also did like the humor in some of the scenes in part one (and you could even argue if there were not some camp aspects in that as well) - but all in all, "Night Watch" was more or less serious in it's tone. "Day Watch" is not camp in the clever sense - it's just goofy. It's not fun. It's out of place there, I think.
In fact, I thought the movie was so different from part one - and sadly, in all the wrong points - that I asked myself how it was possible to send it all down the gutter like that. I thought that maybe the studio or the director got in a fight over something and either one of them tried to pay it back in that way to the other, or that somebody lost a bet or so there, or... I really don't know. I just can't understand it. And also can't understand why they more or less had it end in a way that there's no sense in really making a part 3 anymore... Guess that's the only good thing I can say about it: After that disaster, I'm actually glad that there maybe will be no movie to follow.
(And even if I have to disappoint all you Slavophil guys out there who are just proud to finally have a cool movie you can show to foreign audiences: Good special effects and the state as a sequel to a good movie doesn't make this a good movie. I'm afraid so.)