The Night Watch
Tags: romantic

Plot synopsis:
In the prologue, which is set in medieval times, the audience is introduced to humans with special powers called The Others (Иные, иной; Inyye, Inoy). The Others are divided into two camps, with each Other either allied with the forces of Light or the forces of Darkness, and the prologue recounts a great battle between the two sides. Geser, the Lord of the Light, realized that the two forces would eventually annihilate each other. He stopped the battle and offered a truce to the forces of Darkness, led by Zavulon. To make sure each side honored its side of the agreement, the Light would have a "Night Watch" to monitor the forces of Darkness at night, and the Darkness would have a "Day Watch" to police the forces of Light during the day. This agreement maintained balance for centuries to come.
In modern-day Moscow, Anton Gorodetsky (Russian: Антон Городецкий) visits a witch named Daria and asks her to cast a spell to return his wife to him, agreeing that she should miscarry her child as part of it. Just as the spell is about to be completed, two figures burst in and restrain Daria, preventing her from completing the spell. When they notice that Anton is able to see them, they realize that he is an Other.
Twelve years later, Anton has become a member of the Night Watch and is working with the same team. On Anton's request, Kostya, his neighbor, takes him to see his father, a butcher, to get blood for Anton to drink. The father does this reluctantly, and then tells Kostya that members of the Night Watch only drink blood when they hunt vampires like themselves.
A twelve-year-old boy, Yegor, hears "The Call", a psychic call by a vampire who intends to feed on him. Anton tracks Yegor, being able to hear the call as he gets closer to Yegor, due to the blood he drank. On the way he sees a blond woman that terrifies him. Realizing she is under a deadly curse, Anton uses an ultraviolet flashlight to see if she is a vampire, but she is not. Two vampires are about to feed on Yegor when Anton arrives, and Anton kills one of them while being badly injured. A member of the Day Watch arrives and reveals that the Day Watch is aware of the murder of one of their Dark members.
Anton is healed by Geser, who notes that he could have solved things more easily by entering into the Gloom—a shadow world only accessible by the Others. After Anton tells him about the woman in the subway, he reveals a legend about a virgin who is cursed so that people and animals around her die or sicken, and that she is accompanied by a "vortex of damnation". It is now clear that the virgin, now reborn, will soon die, unless the Night Watch finds the one who cursed her. Geser gives Anton an assistant, a stuffed owl named Olga. Anton laughs and refuses, until he sees Geser throw Olga out the window, whereupon she turns into a living owl and flies away. At Anton's apartment, the owl arrives and shape shifts into a woman.
Kostya arrives and says he knows that Anton killed the vampire Dark Other. Anton and Olga track Yegor to his home, where they must enter the Gloom, as Yegor is there hiding from the female vampire. The Gloom almost consumes Yegor, but a blood sacrifice from Anton satisfies it enough for them to escape. Emerging from the Gloom, Anton sees a photo of Yegor and his mother, who is apparently Anton's ex-wife, thereby revealing that Yegor is his son. The Night Watch members, Tiger and Bear, stay behind to protect Yegor, but as soon as they are distracted, the boy escapes and follows the call of the female vampire. During this time, Zavulon is seen working on a computer prediction in which he is fighting with someone, constantly losing.
Anton and Olga arrive at a command and control center set up near the apartment of Svetlana, the cursed woman from the subway train. A vortex capable of immense destruction has appeared over her apartment and bad things have been happening to those near her. Just before Anton goes into speak with her, Svetlana tells her neighbor Gregori that his mother has died, and this sets off a series of events that will shortly cause a nuclear meltdown unless the curse is abated. Anton enters Svetlana's apartment under the guise of needing medical care and talks to her, revealing that she cursed herself on her own, which also means she is an Other. As soon as this is revealed, the curse ends and the vortex disappears. Yegor escapes the grip of the female vampire, but is caught by Zavulon, who appears on the roof. During a duel, Anton attempts to stab Zavulon, but Zavulon sidesteps the swipe just as Yegor runs up. Zavulon stops Anton's momentum, both saving Yegor's life and making it appear as if Anton were attempting to kill his son. Zavulon's assistant reads Anton's personal file aloud. When Yegor finds out that Anton tried to kill him before he was born, and that he has special powers that the prophecy says are held by the Great One, he willingly turns to the Darkness, to Anton's great dismay. An afterword describes that as Yegor has chosen the Dark, he will lead the world into Darkness, but as long as there are those who choose to fight the Darkness all around them, there is hope.

Review: Spellbinging stories of love and loneliness during the London Blitz.
The Night Watch employs an unusual narrative structure (presumably duplicated from the novel by Sarah Waters) which begins in 1947, then flashes back not once but twice to show us how the large cast of characters came to arrive at the "end" of the story.
This device isn't simply a flashy trick; it's integral to the movie's richly layered meditation on time and circumstance.Human relationships are the heart of the story, as we see various friends and lovers couple and decouple against the background of London during the Blitz and the aftermath of WWII.
The atmosphere is dark and sensual, the music is mesmerizing, and the performances are riveting.I had the pleasure of seeing this movie at a film festival with no prior knowledge of it, and won't say anything more to spoil its wonderful surprises.
I can only say, emphatically, that it should not be missed..
Moments of greatness.
Adapting a book to the screen is tough.
You need to be brutal, cutting away entire plot lines, even characters to serve your purpose.
I haven't read The Night Watch but this adaptation shows all the signs of a too-reverential approach.
That's a shame because it gets a lot of things right, a few breathtakingly so.
In those moments, it's unlike anything I've seen.
You could pitch it as Aimee and Jaguar meets The End of the Affair but at its best it's better than either of those films.
It's Anna Maxwell Martin's portrayal of Kay Langrish that takes it to those heights.
Claire Foy turns in a wonderful performance but she has less to work with.
Unfortunately, The Night Watch is also saddled with at least one too many plot strands and a stunning miscalculation in thinking that Bath and or Bristol could double for wartime London.
I know it's hard to find much of the capital that hasn't been tarted up since 1945 but west country stone and Georgian porticos, along with hills that put Lisbon to shame, don't fool anyone.
And there are other misjudgments.
There's a technical device which is used three times.
You'll know it when you see it.
The first use is amazing, emotionally spot on.
The second is just confusing and the third downright clunky.
As is some of the dialogue.
"War changes people...
and not necessarily for the better." In a book, that leadenly expositional second phrase may be necessary.
In a film, it's amateurish.
With a firmer, more demanding hand, this might have stood as a genuinely great work.
Even as is, it's better than almost anything else you'll find on British or American TV so enjoy, despite the flaws.
You won't regret it..
good version of OK novel.
This is a feature-length adaptation of Sarah Water's book of the same name.I first came across Sarah Water's writing when I watch Tipping The Velvet on TV.
I enjoyed the series so much that I then read the book, which was a great read.
(I thoroughly recommend you read the book and watch the series - I don't think the order matters).
I guess the reason that I wasn't bowled over by this drama stems from the fact that I am not a fan of the book.
I read it a few months ago, and whilst I enjoyed it, it was nowhere near as good as Tipping The Velvet.
I think the problem being that whilst it has interesting characters, the story just wasn't strong enough and it just seemed to pootle along without much direction.Saying that though, I would still recommend that you watch this drama as it is very atmospheric and the acting is on the whole good, especially the wonderful Anna Maxwell Martin, who is always very watchable, as is Clare Foy..
A Faithful Adaptation.
I watched this quite literally minutes after finishing the book it's based on.
With that in mind, I find that it is a very faithful adaptation of the book; only changing minor elements, mainly for the sake of cutting down scenes and giving more of a conclusive ending than the book.
However, I'm not sure that this makes it a good movie.I enjoyed it thoroughly, but a lot of that was because I knew what was going on in the heads of each character in every scene.
I had the narrative of the book backing up the long silent scenes.
I feel like without knowing the book, it is a movie with sparing dialogue, and a lot of inference.
It's more like looking at a set of well-crafted paintings than a guided journey.Still, as it is faithful to a rich source, it has excellent characters, which are the main structure of the story.
I feel they did a good job with casting all-around, and in the end I felt like I got to experience rereading the book on fast-forward with new visuals..
Classy adaptation of a fine novel.
A beautifully crafted adaptation of the Sarah Waters novel of the same name.
An interesting narrative structure taken from the book, the story is experienced backwards in three periods in the characters lives, running from the post war section back in time to wartime experiences of love in the Blitz.
All of the performances are terrific, understated and subtle they convey the complex emotional landscape of their intertwining lives and a point in history when the social landscape was shifting with women finding themselves empowered by the demands and experiences of wartime Britain, releasing them from their more traditional roles and allowing them to rise to address new challenges and experiences, both actually and emotionally.
The casting, acting and beautiful camera work make this a real treat, with a lovely sense of place..
Good story, poor plot.
It had so much potential.
The actors were good, the set design was accurate as well, but with the way the plot was sequenced, it doesn't keep you on the hook.
20 minutes through the movie, your attention will start to wander.
In fact, the whole first hour had so many unnecessary fillers and the bland music score is that of a typical TV movie which adds further to the injury.
Then towards the end, when things started to get interesting and after enduring that one and a half hour, it gives you a half-baked ending.
Maybe with a better arranged storyboard, this movie would have been masterpiece.