So, I had the distinct pleasure of reviewing Night
Watch last year. It was a very fun, imaginative
tale about a balance between two secret and magical
police forces, one good and one evil, constantly
“watch”ing the other side to keep the balance. It
suffered a bit from being slightly anti-climactic and
predictable. This could either be a symptom or a
cause of both the story and the action losing steam
about halfway through. Nonetheless, it was original
and entertaining enough. I ended that review saying
that I had an inkling that the sequel would “totally
rule”. Day Watch is that sequel"¦ but
did it totally rule?

Picking up shortly after the first one left off, we
are still following our hero Anton (Konstantin
Khabensky). (Oh, keep in mind, I’m probably
gonna throw down some spoilers for Night Watch,
so if you want to see that too, go read that review,
then watch it, then read THIS review and see this film
afterwards if you’re so inclined.) Anton is still
a member of the Night Watch and he’s still trying to
keep the evil vampires from eating people. He thinks
about his son pretty often, who turned out to be one
of those “chosen ones” from literature, but had joined
the dark side in the last film. Anton is also in
charge of training someone for the Night Watch, and
this young lady (named Svetlana, played by Mariya
Poroshina) shows promisings of being a special
person herself. It turns out, that if she were to
ever meet another chosen one in battle (Anton’s son),
the world could be destroyed. A fight between them
would upset the balance between good and evil. Anton
notices that he has some dumb luck to have son be a
chosen one for evil and his protégé a chosen one for
good. So he takes it upon himself to seek out the
Chalk of Fate: a mystical artifact that can save all
of existence from its impending doom.

All in all, the crazy-cool special effects are intact
from the first movie; in fact they are more realistic
and action-packed. The movie itself is smarter,
hipper, funnier and more interesting. You basically
have this epic fantasy quest to save humanity but all
in the realm of modern day Moscow. This whole
struggle takes place under the surface, some of it in
“The Gloom”, a dark, magical realm which only
supernatural beings can enter. These beings also have
vague powers and live in their own world of logic
where anything can happen. That being said, I don’t
know if the Russians have the same knack for this
brand of magical realism, the same way Spanish-language auteurs and a lot of Japanese
animators do.