Once upon a time, every "cool" nerd owned a copy of Night Watch on DVD, waxing lyrical about it as we drank cheap vodka because we were too cool for beer and playing Vampire The Masquerade because we were too cool for D&D. Not only did Night Watch suit our aesthetic perfectly, with its mix of low-fantasy, horror and art-house tones, plus it was a foreign film, so we could be all superior about people who watched the English dub and missed out on the awesome custom subtitles. A few years later, when the sequel, Day Watch came out, and was generally regarded as a pretty poor follow-up, we all put our DVDs away and I honestly hadn't heard anything about Night Watch again until I found my copy whilst sorting out my collection. Now, I've said before that I wasn't the greatest person in the world in my late teens and early twenties, but watching this film again brought some stuff up, not just about me personally, but how the manner in which films has changed and the importance of critical reflection. The opening of Night Watch sets up the main conflict for the film, "Others", supernatural creatures of human birth, are divided into two camps, Light and Dark, who have reached a truce after centuries of combat, with the Day Watch policing the Light Others and the Night Watch policing the Dark Others.
Ok, that's a reasonable enough set-up for the film, with clear divisions of sides and there's a prophecy of a chosen one that gives a narrative to cling to; although this is all pretty basic, that turns out to be a good choice, as Night Watch at no other times plays by any rules. The younger me claimed to "get" everything going on in Night Watch, because he needed to feel clever, but so much of what is happening just doesn't make sense, which is actually the point. Why and how is Olga an owl? Who knows? All the Vampires are Dark Others, but every Other gets to choose their side so why aren't there good Vampires? Doesn't matter. What is the Gloom? Meh? How does Zavulon predict the future with a Playstation 2? I don't know, but when he pulls a sword out of his spine, it's pretty neat. Night Watch is a triumph of style over substance, which is actually perfectly fine, as that's what it's going for and it gets there brilliantly. Like many a good roleplaying game, the final battle for the fate of the world comes down to a couple of guys in trench-coats wrestling on a roof somewhere, but at least this time, the coats make sense; it's cold in Russia.
There is a game in here somewhere that isn't in the World of Darkness, as the Night Watch themselves do have a team vibe going, with Anton having psychic/empathic powers, Olga being a strategy expert and the two shapeshifters being the beatsticks of the team (one is a Werebear the other a Weretiger). More supernatural based superhero teams, like the Croatonans or Night Stalkers, are certainly a thing, and not what I've seen most players do in miniatures or RPGs. Night Watch isn't the avant-garde, ocean-deep, genre-bending indy masterpiece I thought it was back in 2005 when I first saw it, but there is a lot there to enjoy now that I understand film better, even if it's almost just a show-reel for some interesting tableau. As far as potential Russian heroes for my Ultimate Alliance games, Night Watch is a more grounded alternative to Guardians, with the Night Watch likely running around in their Power Grid uniforms after the Guardians have wrecked another tower or two in a big flashy fight, cleaning up the real mess of cyborg henchmen left behind.
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