WANTED - offensive, derivative, stupid

WANTED is the kind of unintelligent macho bullshit that appeals to the lowest common denominator. In particular, it'll appeal to every pathetic geek who dreamed of being swept into a more exciting life by a hot chick. In this case the geek is the newly buff James McAvoy, who despite the body-building remains far more convincing as the nervous schmuck than as the hard-as-nails assassin. The hot chick is Angelina Jolie, who does nothing more than look cool. Why does a woman of such obvious intelligence and acting ability persist in such roles? Morgan Freeman plays the arrogant prick directing the group of assassins in picking off seemingly innocent people. Apparently it's all okay because the Loom of Fate says so. I was pretty disturbed that this movie took an hour to even ask the question of whether murder is ever justified and by how quickly it brushed it off.

Maybe I'm taking all this too seriously? Let's consign our brains and ethical sense to the boot of the car, and go on pure adrenaline. How does WANTED fare qua action flick? As with all of Timur Bekmambetov's movies, the visual style is MATRIX-lite. It's all bullet-speed photography. The sole innovation is to have the bullets curve. A-HA!!! I'm sorry but that does not fill a 2 hour movie. What you don't get with WANTED is a fully fleshed alternate world that contextualises all the violence. WANTED is about beating the crap out of people. Period. NIGHT and DAY WATCH have higher stakes, and more respect for old-fashioned stuff like proper plotting and dialogue and emotional pay-offs. By contrast, the supposedly emotional plot-twist in WANTED just looks like a cheap rip-off of EMPIRE STRIKES BACK.

Basically, this is a big budget blockbuster aimed at mindless adrenaline junkies. It's got a big cast and a big marketing budget. But don't let that fool you. It's no less puerile and fascist than the widely derided NEVER BACK DOWN.

Don't believe the hype.

WANTED is on release in the UK, Czech Republic, Hungary, Russia, Singapore, Slovalia, Slovenia, South Korea, Canada, Estonia, Finland, Hong Kong, Lithuania, Panama, Poland, Turkey and the USA. It opens next weekend in Italy and Venezuela. It opens on July 16th in Indonesia, Belgium, Egypt and France. It opens on July 31st in Romania and Australia. WANTED opens in August in Mexico, Braziln and Denmark, and in September in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Japan.

DAY WATCH/DNEVNOY DOZOR - what's with the Dallas ending?!

The world is populated with superficial bastards who judge people on the size of their tits or the size of their wallets. I, on the other hand, judge people on how they answer the following question: "Who are the three greatest military generals of all time?" So it was with not a little excitement that I watched the prologue to DAY WATCH unfold, featuring Tamerlane the Great, ruler of Central Asia, architect of the golden city of Samarkand and creater of Tamerlanian chess. Tamerlane is after the Chalk of Fate. (Like most things in this Russian fantasy world, it feels like it should be capitalised.) The Chalk of Fate allows you to do cool stuff like change the course of your life. Cool that is, until it all goes Bobby Ewing. Other than that, contemporary Moscow is same-old same-old. There are vampires and witches and whatnot and they are split into two camps - Light and Dark - held in a truce that is policed by the Night Watch and Day Watch respectively. Neither side can break the truce for fear of inciting armageddon.

The movie looks great with lots of CGI where a little would do. Most of the best bits are in the trailer. If you think it looks cheesy and OTT you're missing the point. Vampires, Dark Others, Light Others and whatnot drive around in cool cars and kick ass, usually to a rubbish thrash-metal sound-track. They even make Anton (hero) and Olga (leader of good guys' girlfriend) swap bodies, enabling a truly low-rent girl-on-girl love scene with Sveta (the Luke Skywalker of this set-up). I haven't seen anything that crappy since Whoopi/Demi/Swayze got it on in GHOST. The plot, for what it's worth, sees Anton framed for murder by the Day Watch who are just itching to break the truce and start a war. After all, they have Anton's son Yegor on their side, and he's a potentially war-winning Great Other. The only glitch is that the Night Watch also have a potential Great Other in the shape of Sveta. Cue the compulsary final show-down in which Timur Bekmambetov has a lot of fun blowing shit up.

I have to say I was a bit less impressed with DAY WATCH than its predecessor. Maybe I'd just seen it all before? The ending didn't help but even before then it seemed a bit thin. Nonetheless, these movies are perfect for the times when you just need Pure Trash Entertainment. And they always have that little bit extra. I especially like the subtle spoofing of Communist-era bureaucracy as well as New Russian vulgar consumerism.

For hardcore fans, here are some supplementary notes:

First, some things you won't find in the British theatrical release. Thanks to the distributors, Fox Searchlight, you won't find an extra 20 minutes of footage that make the plot feel ever so slightly less random. You won't find a lot of one of the coolest characters in NIGHT WATCH, Bear. (Also, we note that Ignat is still a non-person.) You also won't find a lot of the magic and thoughtfulness that you get in the novels. Perhaps the biggest change from novel to screen is in the role of Anton's son Yegor. In the novels, he's a relatively low-level Other and flip-flops rather charmingly in neutrality for as long as possible. In the movie, he's a Great Other who will be pitted in battle against Sveta. As a result, Anton's visit to the witch earlier on in the story, takes on a mythic importance and leads to a somewhat DALLAS ending....

DAY WATCH/NIGHT WATCH 2/DNEVNOY DOZOR was released in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine, Armenia and Estonia in 2006. It was released in Egypt, the US, New Zealand, the Philippines, Argentina, Taiwan, Poland, Germany, Spian, Sweden, Greece and Malaysia earlier this year. DAY WATCH played London's Fright Fest last month and is released in the UK, Singapore and Mexico this week. It opens in Turkey, Australia, Norway and Brazil later in October, in Hong Kong on November 1st and in France on March 12th 2008.

NIGHT WATCH - entertaining Russian vampire flick

NIGHT WATCH is a film that has polarised critics and viewers alike, but to my mind it deserves neither the bulletin-board hype nor the scorn of the pretentious broad-sheet reviewers. It is a pretty entertaining, stylishly filmed but also fairly standard good versus bad, fantasy movie.

The movie is the first of a trilogy based on the novels of Sergei Lukyanenko. The idea is that there are a bunch of people who have a variety of special powers, such as the ability to see into the future, or to change form. These are the Others. Usually, people realise that they are an Other when a traumatic incident causes them to manifest “super-human” strength – such as a crash victim being able to pull a car off of another victim.

Back in the Middle Ages, a great battle was fought between the Dark Others (baddies) and Light Others (good guys). However, in a peculiarly Russian Cold War moment of perception, the leaders of each faction realised that as both sides were equally well-matched, there was no chance of either side winning the battle. The only outcome was Mutually Assured Destruction. So the Dark and Light Others agreed a truce. When a new Other became aware of his powers, he would be allowed to choose which side he would join without coercion from either side. To ensure the truce held, there would be a Night Watch made up of good guys and a Day Watch made up of bad guys.

Now, here’s where stuff gets tricky. According to legend, one day an Other will appear who is more powerful than everyone else. His choice of good versus evil will alter the balance of power forever. And that’s where NIGHT WATCH, the movie, brings us in. We see the discovery of the child who will change the balance of power, the Night Watch trying to protect him from vampires, and his eventual choice.

Clearly, if you don’t like films about magic, wizards, vampires and epic battles between Good and Evil, then NIGHT WATCH is not going to be the film for you. But I have to say that, within this genre of Buffy-type extravaganzas, NIGHT WATCH is a good film. It has a suitably mythic story and the movie contains a narrative arc that scratches upon the surface of a richly imagined world that will no doubt be explored more fully in the second and third parts of the trilogy. In addition, there are a lot of “extras” that you don’t normally get in a film like this. For a start, the fact that it is set in contemporary Moscow already lends it a strange other-worldly feel. Second, there is a lot of attention to detail and the rugged reality of such a world. I find it hard to engage in movies that contain such ludicrous concepts as vampires, so this kind of gritty realism helps sucker me in. I particularly liked the scene where the hero, Anton, goes to a meat market to get a glass of pig’s blood to drink. You get a shot of the glass and the blood looks really nauseating. Nowhere in fantasy movies do you ever see the grim consequences of vampirism so well played-out. Third, as one would expect from a director with extensive experience in advertising, everything looks really slick and stylish. The way in which Others move from the real world into the Gloom and the impact of the Gloom on their bodies is brilliantly drawn. Kinda like CSI and Fight Club meet Ghostbusters.

All in all, while I doubt if NIGHT WATCH will be as revolutionary and influential as AKIRA or THE MATRIX, it’s still an enjoyable ride and definitely of superior cinematic quality.

NIGHT WATCH premiered at Moscow 2004 and, having become Russia's first bona fide blockbuster in that year, played in most European markets in 2005. It got a limited US release in February 2006 and is available on DVD. The sequel was released in Russia in January, and the final part is is pre-production.