Night Watch (film, 2004)

In 2000, the Polygon studio formed the Moscow Vampire project, based on the novel Night Watch by S. Lukyanenko. In particular, the operator on it was supposed to be Mikhail Krichman . Later, ORT bought the rights to the project, planning to make a television series with a small budget, but in the process, the project turned into a blockbuster .

Once upon a time, good knights, calling themselves Warriors of Light, plowed the earth, and cleansed it of evil and evil. But once on their way stood the evil Warriors of Darkness. A bloody and merciless battle began. But then the heads of both sides saw that the forces were equal, and the battle was stopped. They concluded a Peace Treaty between themselves, according to which both parties, called the Others, will no longer wage war among themselves. It was said that the Night Watch will be created to control the forces of Darkness and the Day Watch to control the forces of Light. But after a thousand years, the Great Other will appear, who will be destined to go over to the side of evil, and the world will plunge into darkness.

Next, the action takes place in 1992, in Moscow. The young man Anton Gorodetsky comes to the witch with the goal of returning his wife, who has gone to another. The old witch promised to handle it. Inspecting the sorceress’s apartment, Anton goes to the window and sees there ZIL-130 “Gorsvet” and people sitting next to him in overalls. He does not attach much importance to this. The witch warns Anton that the wife is expecting a child, supposedly from a lover, and with witchcraft the child will die in the womb. Anton agrees. When she was almost done, the same people from Gorsvet appeared suddenly and prevented the witch from killing the child. These unknowns are Night Watch employees. They started the “business of sewing”, but then they discovered that Anton sees them, although the sentinels were in the Twilight, a parallel world accessible only by the Other. Consequently, Anton is also Other, potential, uninitiated.

Twelve years pass by. Anton by that time had become an employee of the Night Watch, "A bright magician with a dark past." During his work, he knew all the laws of his organization, namely, control over dark forces: a dark one, in often cases a vampire, must obtain a license to kill a person. Anton’s lifestyle is rather boring: he suppresses vodka and makes friends with the vampire neighbors Saushkins, father and son. One day he receives the following mission: unknown dark men began to hunt for the teenager Yegor, who succumbed to their call. Anton’s task is to track him and prevent the hunt. To do this, he drinks the blood of pigs, tuning in to the vampire call. He manages to track the boy in the subway; he noticed the surveillance and decided to stay away from the pursuer. But at the call he still continues to succumb. When the boy was already in the hands of vampires, the evil vampire hairdresser Andrei and his girlfriend Larisa, Anton called for reinforcements - the very bright ones who took the witch: the driver Semyon and the magicians-shifters Ilya the bear and Katya the tiger cub. At their ZIL, they rush to the place at full speed, almost dropping under the wheels even Zavulon himself - the head of the Day Watch (the car made a somersault through it) . Meanwhile, a fight occurs between Anton and Andrey. Andrei dies at the moment when reinforcements arrived, Anton is seriously wounded and is near death. The case was that Andrei violated the Peace Treaty: he wrote out a license for his girlfriend, but he hunted for another victim, who turned out to be Yegor, and thereby violated the Treaty, as a result of which Anton had to kill Andrei. Night Watch employees deliver the dying Anton to Gorsvet, where he is treated by the wise Geser, the head of the Night Watch. Anton recovers and tells him that in the subway he found a girl with a curse (funnel) and tried to save her, but his attempts were in vain. The cured Anton, the head of the Night Watch, gave a short vacation, giving Olga his companions as a sorceress in the body of an owl, which should protect him from the pursuit of the Day Watch, since they would not be happy to kill the Dark One.

As for the girl, Geser immediately launched an investigation. He quickly found out the name, address of the girl and what upcoming tragic events would occur under the influence of a funnel. One of the closest victims is a plane flying from Antalya, it almost came to a catastrophe. The girl, Sveta is a doctor, does not suspect that she was cursed, and any sudden movement or word of her leads to half sad consequences. Ignat, a former employee of the Night Watch, who had a certain trait, sent him to reassure the girl - he, like no one else, knew how to seduce girls. Ignat by that time decided to move away from work, live a normal human life and scheduled a wedding. Nervous that he was “broken off high”, he begins to confide with Svetlana, and he is immediately removed from the task, locked in the car Seeds.

The vampire Larisa longs for revenge for the death of her lover. On the advice of the witch Alice, she decides to take Yegor hostage. Anton and Olga immediately found out about this. At the last moment, they arrived at the house where Yegor lived, when a vampire beat in the apartment. Having decided to go into the apartment through the Twilight, they notice that Yegor sees them and gets into the Twilight himself, losing consciousness. Olga tells Yegor about the Other World, and that he, like the Other, should choose on whose side he will be: dark or light. At home at Yegor, Anton found a photograph of a boy with his mother, in which he recognized his ex-wife, and therefore, Yegor is Anton’s son, and a witch deceived him 12 years ago, saying that the child was a stranger.

Meanwhile, the funnel begins to develop, and terrifying events take place in the city: the mother of the neighbor Svetlana Maxim Ivanovich, the employee of the thermal power plant, who soon explodes, as a result of which all of Moscow will lose coverage (as reported in the emergency issue of the news program), people freeze. In the temporary headquarters of the Night Watch, the apartment of frozen people, they can’t find out who cursed the Light. The last hope for saving people remains Anton. He and Olga are being recalled to headquarters, and Tiger and the Bear are left to look after Yegor. At headquarters, Geser is talking to the magician Zavulon, the head of the Day Watch, annoyed by Anton's act. At the request of Geser, he gives him an amulet of protection and leaves. Geser asks Anton in some way to find out who cursed Svetlana. He comes to her house under the guise of a sick patient, but she realizes that he is healthy and demands to leave. Anton keeps her to the last, trying to find an excuse why he came and in a conversation begins to understand that the girl lives poorly: she is a virgin, unpretentious by nature, the world has turned her back on her. The last straw for Sveta was the mother’s refusal of a kidney transplant, to which her daughter went. The girl could not stand it and shouted: "Damn me." It becomes clear that she cursed herself, and that the Light is Other. They remove the curse, the city returns to its former life. Anton advises her not to say that again.

During the removal of the curse at the headquarters of the Night Watch, it becomes known about the capture of Yegor: the boy completely succumbed to the call of the vampire and climbed onto the roof of his house, thereby being held hostage, and behind him the Tiger cub and the Bear who lost their vigilance. Anton is notified about this in Svetlana’s apartment and comes to the roof at the request of Larisa. The vampire demands that Anton take off the amulet and throw the lantern, she says that she wants to become a man again and accuses the Svetly of injustice. Egor manages to escape, and then Zebulon bursts into the scene of the action on the elevator. Larisa dies, the light ones disappear, Anton, who has lost the amulet, remains face to face with the dark lord. There is a battle between them, Anton is trying to escape, but Day Watch employees interfere with him. Zebulun is about to finish off the bright one, but Yegor, who appeared with the amulet, interferes with him. Exhausted Anton, deciding that this is another Dark one, takes out a knife and attacks him, the lord of darkness stops him. Egor is presented with ardent arguments that Anton wanted to kill him not only now, but then, in 1992. The Other Boy, having decided that Anton had been looking for him all this time for the sake of murder, and that all the light ones are just as false, chooses the dark side. Realizing that this is the setup of Zebulun, Anton begins to beat him pointlessly. Thus appeared the Great Other, who chose the power of evil, and the world will plunge into darkness. But while there are those who believe in the light, hope remains.

• Script writers: Sergey Lukyanenko , Timur Bekmambetov , Laeta Kalogridis (English version)
• Stage Director: Timur Bekmambetov
• Director of photography: Sergey Trofimov
• Composer: Yuri Potenko
• Leading producers: Varya Avdyushko , Alexei Kublitsky
• General producers: Anatoly Maksimov , Konstantin Ernst
• Technical Special Effects Artist - Valery Grankov

Russian critics restrained positively about the film ^[6] . Many publications noted the fact that such a large-scale fantastic picture appeared as a positive trend. As Pyotr Tyulenev wrote in the journal World of Fantasy , “Night Watch” is not remarkable in itself, but as the first sign of a new Russian science fiction movie. ... Certain flaws are excusable for the first pancake ” ^[7] Among the shortcomings of the picture, critics noted strong differences with the original source and the abundance of product placement ^[8] . In 2010, the British magazine Empire published a list of one hundred of the best non-English films in the history of cinema. The Night Watch took the hundredth place in it ^[9] .

• Golden Eagle (2004): The best work of a sound engineer.

• “Night Watch” performed by the group “ Umaturman ” (lyrics by S. Lukyanenko , V. Kristovsky ; music. V. Kristovsky).
• "Dark and Light" performed by Jeanne Friske

• Groys B., Ryklin M., Trauberg N. , Petrovskaya E., Pepperstein P. Watch as a symptom (philosophical essays) / Portrait. Konstantin Ernst (Russian) // "Session": magazine. - 2006. - No. 29-30 . - S. 166-173 .
• Kupriyanov B., Surkov M. Dozor as a symptom: an analytical compilation devoted to a major phenomenon of Russian mass culture - the films “Night Watch” and “Day Watch” . - M .: ANO "Promotion of Independent Literature" Phalanster "”, 2006. - 416 p. - 3000 copies. - ISBN 5-87987-042-1 .
• Latynina A. “I saw how evil is beautiful, how tedious good ...” (Russian) // “New World”: magazine. - 2007. - No. 4 . - S. 166-173 .
• Sergey Lukyanenko. Going to the cinema // If: magazine. - Moscow: Favorite book, 2004. - No. 2 . - S. 211-219 . - ISSN 0136-0140 .
• Dmitry Tarabanov. "Night Watch" by Sergey Lukyanenko: The first viewing of the film // World of fiction: magazine. - Moscow, 2004. - No. 4 . - S. 6-11 . - ISBN 9-771810-224009.
• Peter Tyulenev. Our film. "Night Watch" by Sergey Lukyanenko: Other World // World of Fantasy: Journal. - Moscow, 2004. - No. 4 . - S. 42–46 . - ISBN 9-771810-224009.
• Peter Tyulenev. Our film. "Night Watch" // World of fiction: a magazine. - Moscow, 2004. - No. 8 . - S. 40-44 . - ISBN 9-771810-224009.
• Peter Tyulenev. Our film. "Night Watch" // World of fiction: a magazine. - Moscow, 2004. - No. 12 . - S. 40 . - ISBN 9-771810-224009.
• Boris Nevsky. Night Watch Swings at the Oscars? (unopened) (inaccessible link) . The world of fiction. Date of treatment March 14, 2016. Archived March 14, 2016.
• Boris Nevsky. Night Watch: Americans are surprised (unopened) (inaccessible link) . The world of fiction. Date of treatment March 14, 2016. Archived March 14, 2016.
• Peter Tyulenev, Nikolai Pegasov, Mikhail Popov, Alexander Trifonov. Results 2004 // World of fiction: magazine. - Moscow, 2005. - No. 2 . - S. 70-78 . - ISBN 9-771810-224009.
• Sergey Berezhnoy. We are all somewhat Different . - 2004.
• Stephanie Dreier, "The ethics of urban and epic Russian fantasy," Canadian Slavonic Papers 60, no. 1-2 (2018)

• Former official site of the movie "Night Watch"
• S. Berezhnoy. “We are all somewhat Different” (review)
• Kinolyapy and differences in the Russian and foreign versions of Dozorov (SPAM)
• Whom does the “night watch” protect?
• Alexander Chekulaev. Review of the film: The Night Bazaar (Russian) // World of Fantasy: Journal. - 2005. - No. 21 . - S. 52-54 . - ISBN 9-771810-224009.