As a fan of NIGHT WATCH and DAY WATCH (both of which are visually referenced in this trailer unless my eyes deceive me), I'm enthused for what looks like a fine slice of eye candy.

Could Timur be the next Luc Besson?

http://www.wantedmovie.com

It does look like fun if a MATRIX rip-off (as far as the basic plot).

It reminds me a lot more of LA FEMME NIKITA than THE MATRIX.

He's taken in by a group of highly elite assassins and trained to be an unstoppable killing machine.

Furthermore, Konstantin (Anton Goredetsky) Khabensky's character name is The Exterminator which smacks of The Cleaner.

P.S.--Winning the "I Can't Believe I Bought It Three Times" dvd award, the Region 1 DAY WATCH dvd is really fantastic. No, the subtitles don't do any fancy tricks, but a lot of thought and intelligence seems to have gone into the translation. I've enjoyed DAY WATCH without subtitles (eye candy!) and with awkward subtitles, but with this new Region 1 release, I feel like I finally get a sense of what Russian audiences saw in the film.

Between the new subtitles and Timur's English commentary, I now realize that DAY WATCH really is the Russian TRAINSPOTTING. It's not just that it's a sleek film about the forces of good and evil slugging it out in Moscow. Underneath of the genre pulp storyline is a slick cocktail of contemporary Russian pop culture.

If you already own too many copies of DAY WATCH, the new dvd is at least worth a rental.

I'm definitely getting a MATRIX vibe on the basic plot:

MATRIX:
Nerdy guy (Keanu Reeves) discovers the world isn't what he thinks it is. He is introduced to the new world by a sexy femme fatale (Carrie-Anne Moss), where he meets a wise black man (Lawrences Fishburne) who becomes his mentor. In the course of the film, he discovers power within himself to save the world.

WANTED: (based on the trailer viewing only)
Nerdy guy (James McAvoy) discovers the world isn't what he things it is. He is introduced to the new world by a sexy femme fatale (Angelina Jolie), where he meets a wise black man (Morgan Freeman) who becomes his mentor. In the course of the film, he discovers power within himself to save the world.

All that said, I'm still interested just because of Timur directing, but I'm not expecting anything as nearly original as NIGHT WAY or DAY WATCH.

This apparently departs quite a bit from it's source material.

SPOILERS FOR THE COMIC IT'S BASED ON:

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In the comic book mini-series, the young (very much anti) hero is a coffeeshop clerk drawn to look like Eminem. He discovers that he's really the heir to the head of what's basically the Injustice League or the Monster Society of Evil. Basically, in the early 80s, all the supervillains banded together, murdered every single superhero (we're shown what's obviously Superman's cape on display in a trophy case) and literally wrote them out of history. This league of villains now runs the world, and is told that he can "audition" to join their ranks.

He's trained by The Fox, who's drawn like Halle Berry and who is bascially Catwoman. She gets him accustomed to killing by having him machine gun an entire herd of cows before he starts on humans, even though he'd previously been a vegan. He discovers he likes it, and "just for the Hell of it," then murders his own girlfriend. Off-panel, he also rapes and murders a female A-List pop star, just to prove he can.

Various characers are versions of DC's rogues gallery. The "Riddler" characte,r for instance, has crossword puzzles on his costume. The most fun one, based on Bizarro Superman, is called Shithead. At the climax, our "hero" discovers that his father, who is drawn to look like Tommy Lee Jones, is actually still alive. The veteran master villain felt that there are no challenges left, and has not only been grooming his unsuspecting son to replace him and end his boredom by killing him, but to rule the world.

And that's what happens, more or less. The mini-series ends with the "hero" flipping off the reader, triumphantly announcing that he's reason our world is so f*cked up.

I know it's an old question, but why option this property at all if you're going to change it so radically?

Tom, you're killing me. You're the one who convinced me to buy the first Russian DAY WATCH with no subs, mere weeks before the subtitled edition came out. :P

Oh well. I'm making a lot more money now than I was last year. Too bad I've sunk most of it into catchup 401k contributions until the end of the year.

So no one else can do it.

It's funny that you mention it, because you were exactly the person I was thinking of when I wrote that post. I almost addressed you by name.

I'm not going to lie. I really do feel bad that I convinced anyone to get that first release of DAY WATCH.

On the other hand, I'm not sorry to have bought that dvd myself. The elaborate packaging is super cool and certainly better than the boring Region 1 snapcase. Hell, you wouldn't even know that there's a Bekmambetov commentary unless you knew to search for it on the menu.

Fox has clearly given up on the DOZOR franchise after NIGHT WATCH failed to set the English-speaking world on fire. I've read on this board that it rented well, but I also remember NIGHT WATCH only averaging about $1400+ per screen in its first week or so which is hardly remarkable for what I'm sure was intended to be a platform release.

When I saw that DAY WATCH was doing roughly the same kind of numbers, I knew that it wasn't going to get a wider release which was a real disappointment to me seeing as I had been looking forward to seeing it on the big screen.

During it's theatrical release, I seemed to remember multiple critics mentioning that it has similar tricked out subtitles to NIGHT WATCH, but there's nothing like that on the "unrated" dvd. I wonder if that's exclusive to the "rated" theatrical cut or if Fox was handing out LSD at press screenings to save money.

Be that as it may, the subtitles on DAY WATCH are far more elegantly written than the ones for NIGHT WATCH. I have to rewatch my Region 0 disc, but I don't remember Zavulon's veiled threat to Yegor early in the movie, "We won't force you. We wouldn't want that to happen." Or Kostya's response to Alicia telling him that Anton has become a woman, "The things people get up to nowadays."

I remember excitedly showing DAY WATCH to a group of friends who had seen and enjoyed the theatrical release of NIGHT WATCH and they were pretty much bored by it. Of course, I put it on right after Peter Jackson's massive KING KONG so that might have had something to do with it, but my best friend told me that he liked NIGHT WATCH better. DAY WATCH, he said, was "too convoluted" and "too Russian."

And to be fair to them, although the new subtitles make the movie flow a lot better, it really does seem even more Russian than ever now that Timur has pointed out some of the cultural references.

And the filme apparently has an opening credits sequence. Who knew? The reflections in Anton and Sveta's windshield in the opening are apparently the opening titles designed to look like popular Russian logos.

But wouldn't those words be reversed? Ah, well. That's the magic of cinema.

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As far as the comic spoilers, I suspect that the logistics of including the DC universe in what is essentially a NIKITA redux by way of THE MATRIX would have made the project economically unfeasible.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the film will follow the comic's structure on a smaller scale with less anarchy. And even if it doesn't, it's just an excuse for Timur to play with Hollywood's big budget toys and throw a few of his established visual motifs at the audience.

What's funny about the trailer is that it's loaded with things which are simply not possible from Angelina's gymnastics to firearms so sci-fi that they defy the laws of physics. Forget Morgan Freeman's "magic bullet." Angelina's hinged flip around weapon raises more questions than it answers (of course, the same could be said to be true of any firearm :P ).

Gun enthusiasts (like Stephen Hunter) will either be thrilled or offended.

Fair point, but while the comic winks at the DC universe, it's not set there and wasn't published by DC. Which is why the heroine is The Fox (and black) rather than Catwoman, and the Bizarro Superman analog is called "Shithead." Even the dead (and unnamed) "Superman's" cape, which the league keeps as a trophy, lacks the emblematic "S", although it's red.

I suspect the film will do more than just eliminate the superheroes. I don't imagine that the hero, who is this incarnation may actually be one, kills his girlfriend just to experence the liberation of being evil, and I REALLY doubt he'll make an offhand remark about raping and killing a famous pop star "just because I could." Nor is it likely to end with him in control of the world.

I just watched the trailer and also am disappointed that this appears to be changed so much from the book. Aren't superheroes bankable now? Or does this just keep the budget lower? Even worse is that the entire point of showing bad guys from their own perspective is gone though I guess we'll have to wait for the finished film to be sure. I'd always expected this to be watered down for Hollywood but not quite this much. So now I'm just gearing up in hopes that it will be some kind of pleasantly goofy action film.