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Day Watch

Anything but predictable
By CHRIS BRAIOTTA  |  June 6, 2007
3.0 3.0 Stars

VIDEO: Watch the trailer for Day Watch.

Like its predecessor, Timur Bekmambetov’s Day Watch is a muddled fantasy epic. But unlike Night Watch, this one nudges the magical antics aside to make way for a superhuman police procedural. The story’s built around a treaty that maintains a stalemate between the supernatural forces of Light and Dark. This mystical cold war is threatening to thaw and restore life to Moscow, but then an agent of Light, Anton (Konstantin Khabensky), gets framed for the murder of a Dark officer. Incantational slap fights ensue, but Bekmambetov is more interested in building a Terry Gilliam–infused bureaucratic thriller where twilit éminences grises wage war via search warrant. The film doesn’t always make sense, but it’s witty, and anything but predictable. And its allegiance to European cinema-by-inference nurtures mystery and awe in a genre where both are rarer than they ought to be.
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  Topics: Reviews , Timur Bekmambetov , Konstantin Khabensky , Terry Gilliam
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