Night Watch (2004) Hey what's up guys. Today I'll show
you an action-fantasy film: "Night Watch, Part 1"! Spoiler ahead, watch out and take care!
The movie begins with a man narrating about the existence of the species called Others:
the supernatural beings who roamed the Earth, and possess powers beyond those of ordinary
human beings. They were separated into two forces: Dark and Light. A long time ago,
the two armies met and clashed. It was a bloody and gruesome battle. The Dark Lord
revels in the carnage before him, but the Light Leader is disgusted by the destruction.
As the battle wore on, the two commanders realized that the two armies were equally matched,
and they would each decimate the other. So the Dark Lord and Light Leader forged a truce,
and vowed not to overstep. Each army would oversee the actions of the other, and ensure that no one
side would have too much power. The unknown man continues to narrate
that soon an Other would come, and be borne of both Light and Dark.
The film jumps to 19 92 Moscow, where a man named Anton, visits an old woman's apartment.
She ushers him in, and immediately knows what he wants her to do. He lost his wife to another man,
and she even got pregnant with the other man's baby. It turns out, the old woman is a witch,
and she offers to cast a spell that would make his wife come back to him. In addition,
she would also miscarry the baby in her womb. But in return, the spell will also take something
from him. Anton readily agrees. She pricks his finger and extracts a blood drop. She mixes
the blood in a vial of water, and makes Anton drink it. He reluctantly swallows the water;
and in another country, his wife suddenly leaves her paramour. For the second part of the spell,
the old witch utters a few incantations to make his wife miscarry.
But in the middle of her enchantment, three invisible people apprehend the witch. That is,
they're only invisible to the eyes of ordinary humans. Inexplicably, Anton can see them. Right
after this, he loses consciousness. The three people belong to the forces of
Light. They function as policemen that would track down Dark creatures like the old witch,
when they misbehave. Anton wakes up, and sees that the three people have tied the old witch
to the chair. The people surmise that Anton must not be a human, but is actually an Other.
Years later, Anton is now a member of the Light forces. His special power is the prophetic visions
he has. Anton gets assigned with apprehending a vampire, who's disobeying the treaty rules by
luring a young twelve-year-old boy from the swimming pool he is at. He begs his vampire
neighbor to take him to his father's butcher shop, so he can drink animal blood. The blood hypes
Anton up for the hunt, and he begins looking for the boy in the subway. After he leaves,
the neighbor remarks to his father that Anton will join their side now; but his father just
answers that that's just what Light soldiers do when they're prepping for a hunt.
The blood allows Anton to feel closer to vampires. It has a strange drunken effect on him,
and he sways from side to side on the train. He also glimpses a blonde woman on the train;
but Anton gets a vision of darkness, and he screams in the middle of the packed train.
He departs the train, and follows a young boy to the dark street. But two human policemen stop him,
thinking that he is a drunk and disorderly man. This causes Anton
to throw up all the blood he ingested. The boy continues walking down the street.
He hears a female voice calling out to him, and he's drawn to a big abandoned house. He
climbs upstairs, and thinks he's alone; but a vampire man appears in the mirror's
reflection, and the boy screams. Anton finally makes it to the house,
and sees that the vampire man and a female vampire are about to feast on the boy. He engages the
vampires in combat, and as they tear through the house, Anton sustains injuries. Vampire man tells
Anton that the Light soldiers are not playing fair, since they are using live humans as bait
to catch Dark members doing crimes. The vampire man slams him to the floor,
and is about to stab him with a large piece of a mirror. Right then, Anton's colleagues, the
three Light soldiers who discovered him earlier in the film, barged into the house while driving
a truck. They quickly flip on the headlights, and Anton grabs a smaller mirror piece, and lets the
headlights hit the glass. The light reflects and shines on the vampires, allowing Anton
to escape with his colleagues. The vampire man gets killed while the female vampire flees.
They bring the injured Anton back to the headquarters of the Light. The Light Leader
is there, and he instructs them to put Anton down on his table. He then proceeds to operate
on him. Anton opens his mouth, and hoarsely tells Light Leader about the mysterious woman he saw on
the train. The Light Leader presses his eye to Anton's, so he can also see what he saw.
He realizes that the woman Anton saw is the reincarnation of the Virgin. Back in Byzantium,
a human woman was cursed. Everything she touches was destroyed. She was the reason why the forces
of Dark and Light fought each other many centuries ago. A prophecy foretells that the return of the
Virgin would signify a second battle between Dark and Light. However, a powerful Other
would also come and tip the scales this time. Whichever army this powerful Other would choose
will determine the outcome of the battle. Meanwhile, a powerful Dark being hears of what
happened between Anton and the vampires. She lures the female vampire with a jar of blood,
and orders her to find the boy again, so they can track down Anton.
Anton wakes up, and forces himself to get up despite his injuries. He tells Light Leader
that he will find the boy. Light Leader then offers him a stuffed owl as his partner in his
endeavor. But Anton scoffs at the stuffed owl until Light Leader throws it out the window,
and it transforms into a real owl. The Light Leader's soldiers manage to track
down the blonde woman. Her name is Svetlana, and it appears that she is cursed like the
Virgin in the legend. In recent days, people around her have been meeting tragic fates.
She is a doctor who works in the city, and her mother is dying and in need of a kidney.
The reanimated owl lands inside Anton's apartment. It transforms into a dark-haired woman. She
explains that she was cursed to be an owl, and now she has been freed. The Owl Woman takes
her first hot shower in 60 years. Anton asks her vampire neighbor for some female clothes, and he
begrudgingly agrees. The vampire neighbor is still upset that Anton used him to drink animal blood,
so he could hunt another vampire. He angrily argues that the Light soldiers are so unfair,
since they're the ones who get to regulate and punish the Dark ones. Meanwhile, the members
of the Dark army have to ask for permission and licenses from the Light soldiers.
That night, the entity called the Gloom, tries to claim the boy. Only Others can see the Gloom,
so this signifies that the boy has powers too. The boy's body weakens, and Anton and the Owl Woman
try to save him. He wakes up, and Anton explains to the boy that he is an Other, and soon enough,
he will discover what his gift is. Anton looks around the apartment that
the boy lives in. He picks up a photograph, and realizes that the boy's mother is his
ex-wife. Based on his age, Anton figures out that the boy was the baby he tried to kill,
using the old witch's spell previously. Terrible weather begins to brew around the
city of Moscow because of Svetlana. Planes almost crash, and winds are now picking
up. The Light soldiers all scramble to try and find the origin of her curse;
but they're drawing a blank. They've already tried looking into all of Svetlana's friends
and relatives; but none of them is an Other. Anton gets ahold of the computer they're using
for research. He looks at his own file, and discovers a video of the interrogation of the
old witch. It's revealed in the video that the old witch actually knew that the baby
Anton's ex-wife was carrying, was actually Anton's biological son, not her lover's. She knew this,
and still convinced him to agree to do the spell that would kill the baby.
On the other side, Light Leader and the Dark Lord meet up in anticipation of the second battle.
Anton enters the bedroom they are in, and the Dark Lord attacks him with a metal chain. Light Leader
teaches Anton that he has to fortify his mind, and utter that the Dark Lord has no power over
him. Sure enough, the metal chain's hold around his neck loosens, and the Dark Lord leaves. He
tells Anton that he will see him soon. Light Leader gives Anton an ultimatum:
either he finds the Other who cursed Svetlana, or he kills her himself so the prophesied battle will
not happen. Anton is resolved to save the poor woman, so he goes to her apartment and introduces
himself. He pretends to be one of her patients. But then he reveals himself, and asks her how she
got cursed. Svetlana reveals that her mother is dying and in need of a kidney transplant.
She volunteered her own kidney; but her mother refused. However, Svetlana actually made her
intentions known to her mother, because she knew that her mother would refuse if the kidney came
from her. Ever since then, she has been feeling guilty. Anton then realizes that nobody cursed
Svetlana; but in fact, she cursed herself. She is an Other who has powers that are lying
dormant. Due to the burden of her guilt about her mother's transplant, she cursed herself without
knowing that. This was her way of punishing herself for deceitfully manipulating her own
mother, so she wouldn't have to give her own kidney. Once she admits this, the terrible
weather around the city improves remarkably. She has now freed herself from her curse.
Meanwhile, the female vampire tracks down the boy's building. She climbs onto the rooftop,
and calls for him. There are two colleagues guarding the boy in the apartment; but he
slips by them and goes out onto the rooftop. The female vampire grabs him, and holds him
hostage until Anton arrives. It is actually Anton that she wants, and she's just using the
boy as bait. She wants to exact revenge against Anton for killing the vampire she loves.
Anton reasons that he had no choice but to kill the vampire man, because he violated the truce.
The female vampire spits out that the Light army is very hypocritical, and that they didn't even
help her when she was a human, who was turned by the vampire. Now, she declares that it is
her right to feast on the boy's blood. Anton tells her that he will not let her do that.
Suddenly, the Dark Leader appears. He and Anton fight each other in the basement of
the building. As they jab and punch, the scenery flickers back-and-forth between the modern day,
and memories of the historic fight amidst Light and Dark armies. Anton fights valiantly;
but eventually, the Dark Leader overpowers him and has him down on the floor, with a blade pointed at
him. The boy runs to Anton's rescue. However, the Dark Leader lets him know that he is Anton's son,
and Anton has tried to kill him. Anton cannot exactly refute that since it was the truth, and
this breaks the boy's heart. It turns out, the boy is the prophesied Other, who will tip the scales
in the final battle, not Anton himself. Everything has led to this moment, because the Dark Leader
had carefully orchestrated the events. It's further revealed that the Dark Leader let
Anton believe that he wasn't the father of his wife's unborn child. The hate that Anton felt,
led him to the old witch's apartment, and agreed to the spell. He also planned the vampire luring
of the young boy from the swimming pool, so that he and Anton could meet. The Dark Leader planned
all this, so that the boy would feel betrayed by his savior, and he would choose the Dark side,
rather than the light side. Everything happened according to plan, and the heartbroken boy
chose to go with the Dark Leader. Feeling helpless by the turn of events,
Anton repeatedly strikes the Dark Leader's face. But it doesn't matter, because the prophecy has
already come true. The boy choosing the Dark side means that the Dark army will win, once the final
battle happens. The movie ends with Anton saying in a voiceover that even if the pieces all seem to
be in place already, he will not lose hope that the Light force will triumph in the end!
This's Daniel CC movie channel! Stay safe and enjoy your day!