What is the plot - in one sentence? At a hidden tangent to everyday society, there’s a battle between light and darkness, and we follow a new recruit to the light side.
I don't have time, just spoil it for me? The good side manages to stop an armageddon event, but the dark side tricks the new recruit guy into betraying his own son, and a battle takes place after this.
What is the meaning of the title? The good guys are the night watch. For the record, the people in charge or protecting the world and all that is in it, have at their disposal: a small office with two computers, a truck with three people who may be magic in it, and their great saviour can’t climb 7 flights of stairs without getting out of puff. I think I’d choose the darkness.
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| This is the son having a between worlds vision. The Effects for this were very cool, but it only happened a couple of times in the movie. |
Anything that's not aged well? Does a woman get slapped around? Does a woman get slapped around… not really, there’s violence against ‘women’ but they’re all magical beasts of some sort (it’s very ill-defined – there’s a tiger woman who changes once into a tiger, with some pretty unconvincing CGI.)
Some other things which have aged badly: the nu-metal soundtrack, which was terrible at the time, and the almost constant shaky-cam, particularly for action shots. It’s jarring.
Of note, the main bad guy is playing a sort of video game version of the final fight (he also, ridiculously but not un-coolly rips out his spine to use as a a sword for no reason) but he is swinging the controller around to control the characters. Looking at the year, he predicted the Nintendo Wii.
Any thoughts? This was a bit muddled, glossing over certain things which needed explaining, and taking a lot of time to go anywhere. It starts off with some LOTR knockoff battling with an English language voiceover, which thankfully stopped as they go into a cool-ish sci-fi world.
The central concern for the mid part of the movie, a kid is lured to a couple of vampires, the ‘good’ guy follows the kid, finds the vampires, is attacked by them, and kills one, leaving the other to cause mayhem, is completely nuts. For some reason though, this leads to a huge amount of trouble for breached protocol. But, it’s obviosuly self-defence,and it’s not clear why this killing leads to greater conflict between dark and light.
There’s also a bit involving a woman who is ‘cursed’ and who will somehow bring about the end of the world (a plane is shown crashing, in a pretty cool scene too), but her curse involves her having people get sick around her – but she’s a doctor, of course they’re sick.
Other things that I think could have done with some explanation – most of the stuff involving the son of the main guy. The owl-human assistant – what was her deal? The main bad guy’s partner is a woman who was wearing a very strange dress while she sang on a stage… she’s called Alice and she’s there for a single scene, when it was hinted that she should have been there longer – I would have needed an hour to make sense of her dress.
Other than that it was interesting and there were some really cool effects on the few times that they went into someone’s spirit (which happens when someone is able to see both reality and the underworld).
Final thoughts? At the very beginning, we’re shown a flashback of the guy who turns out to be the main ‘good guy’ of the movie. He’s visiting a witch, and he’s hoping to give his ex-girlfriend an abortion so that he can get her back (yeah, some logic there)… but at the time, he had no knowledge that magic was real… but he must have had an inkling at least, surely, otherwise he wouldn’t have visited someone who can give his ex an abortion? The other good guys stop the ceremony going ahead, recruit him (he can see them, most people wouldn’t be able to) and the kid who is a sort of Christ figure at the end, was the fetus which wasn’t aborted at the time…. Was this movie an anti-abortion movie? Knowing what I know (nothing), I’m going to say… yes??
78 done here, the others are here. Click 'em if you want, merry fuckin' christmas to you.
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