Night Watch

Night Watch (Russian: Ночной Дозор) is a 2004 Russian urban fantasy supernatural thriller film written by Timur Bekmambetov and Laeta Kalogridis and directed by Timur Bekmambetov. It is loosely based on the novel The Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko, and is followed by a sequel, Day Watch.

It was Russia's submission to the 77th Academy Awards for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, but was not accepted as a nominee. The film grossed $1.5 million in limited theatrical release in the United States, then significantly overperformed in United States home video market (generated more than $9.5 million in home video sales and $12 million in home video rentals).

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.

Fourteen 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