Night Watch

PLOT

Since the beginning of time, there have been "Others" - humans endowed with supernatural abilities - and for just as long, the Others have been divided between the forces of Light and Dark. In Medieval times, the armies of both sides met by chance, and a great battle began. Seeing that neither side had a clear advantage, the two faction leaders, Geser and Zavulon, called a truce and each side commissioned a quasi-police force to ensure it was kept; the Light side's force was called The Night Watch.

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 illegitimate 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 also an Other.

Twelve years later, Anton has enlisted in the Night Watch. While policing Moscow, he encounters several portents that Geser says are linked to an ancient prophecy of an immensely powerful Other that will end the stalemate between Light and Dark, but will be more likely to join the Dark. Anton's investigations lead him to a nurse, Svetlana, whom disaster seems to follow everywhere, and a young boy named Yegor.

In the film's climax, Anton prevents a catastrophic storm from leveling Moscow, when he realizes that Svetlana is an Other, and begins teaching her to control her power. But in the process, Anton realizes that Yegor is his own son, and that his wife was pregnant with him when Anton tried to have a spell cast on her (believing, mistakenly, that the father of the child was his wife's lover, not himself). Learning that his own father tried to kill him before he was born turns Yegor - the Other of the prophecy - against Anton and towards Zavulon, which was the latter's plan all along. In helpless rage, Anton strikes Zavulon, while saying in voice over that, although the prophecy has come true and the Dark's victory seems inevitable, he will not give up.

CAST

Konstantin Khabensky as Anton Gorodetsky

Vladimir Menshov as Geser

Viktor Verzhbitsky as Zavulon

Maria Poroshina as Svetlana

Galina Tyunina as Olga

Dmitry Martynov as Yegor

Aleksei Chadov as Kostya Saushkin

Yuriy "Gosha" Kutsenko as Ignat

Rimma Markova as Daria Shultz

Maria Mironova as Yegor's mother

Valeri Zolotukhin as Gennady Saushkin, Kostya's father

Zhanna Friske as Alicia Donnikova

Nikolay Olyalin as inquisitor Maksim

Ilya Lagutenko as Andrei

Aleksei Maklakov as Semyon

Aleksander Samoilenko as Ilya

Anna Slyu as Katya

Anna Dubrovskaya as Larisa

Sergei Prikhodko as Pyotr

Georgiy Dronov as Tolik

Igor Savochkin as Maksim Ivanovich

Nurzhuman Ikhtymbaev as Zoar

Kirill Kleimyonov as himself

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

loosely based on the 1998 novel The Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko

followed by the 2006 sequel, Day Watch.