The punchy, nonstop visual effects crowd out coherent storytelling.

| Oct 20, 2009

For a good hour and change, the film is a big toy box that teases you out of the Gloom.

| Jul 7, 2007

A highly promising curtain-raiser to an ambitious trilogy.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 4, 2006

Twisted, mysterious, bold and compelling, this is a raging cyclone of a movie, sucking up elements from the likes of Blade and The Matrix and whirling them into something new.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 1, 2006

Bekmambetov is a confident, original director, whose visions reveal him as someone to watch -- beyond the next two installments of this trilogy.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Mar 11, 2006

What a rabid beast is Night Watch. What a pungent Russian fantasy-horror cheeseathon.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Mar 3, 2006

Night Watch was one of the most popular movies ever released in Russia. That just proves there's no accounting for taste, in film or in human sacrifice.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Mar 3, 2006

Clarity may be lost, but rare is the movie that grabs viewers by their throats and never lets go. Bekmambetov's Night Watch is one of the grabbers.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Mar 2, 2006

The faux mythology may be cheesy, the grandiose plot stretched thin and full of holes, but underneath the recycled story and style is a hint of something troubling and real.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 2, 2006

Even though you couldn't call it a great science fiction movie, on the level of Tarkovsky's Solaris and Stalker it's often a great, heart-pumping, blow-you- to-the walls movie experience.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 25, 2006

While the movie's inspirations might be glam-Hollywood action fantasies, Night Watch fairly wallows in damp, post-Soviet decay.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 24, 2006

Though Night Watch is impressive at creating atmosphere, the movie is an impenetrable narrative tangle with plot strands running in every direction.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 24, 2006

If [Director] Bekmambetov had any skill in actually telling a story, his kitchen-sink trilogy would be something to celebrate. It presently qualifies as a dubious achievement.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 24, 2006

Although it doesn't have Kate Beckinsale, her guns ablazin', vamped out in the latest vampire-slaying couture, Night Watch is vastly more fun than the similar-themed Underworld pics.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 24, 2006

Night Watch works better as a demo reel for the state of Russian effects work than as a first installment in an epic trilogy.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 24, 2006

Unfortunately, by Hollywood standards, Night Watch is about three Wookies and two Neos short of convincing. All the gobbledygook is in place, but the special effects are minimal and somewhat frustrating.

| Original Score: C | Feb 24, 2006

The original plan was to remake Night Watch in English, and then thought was given to dubbing it. Thankfully both ideas were scuttled, as the film's Russian-ness and its allusions to post-communist fears and frustrations add greatly to its appeal.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 24, 2006

Night Watch is shabby chic, with hints of Russia's great silent-cinema past.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 24, 2006

Ultimately, it's a formulaic, predictable take on a Hollywood staple: the vampire horror film. That's a pretty tired genre, no matter what language it's told in.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 23, 2006

As opposed to the dreary domestic dramas that are [Russian] cinema's stock in trade, this one is a full-stops-out fantasia that is often disgustingly gloppy and looks as if it was birthed by the Wachowski brothers and Quentin Tarantino.

| Original Score: B | Feb 23, 2006