Night Watch (2006), Timur Bekmambetov, D
As if we needed more proof: cool special effects are fun to watch for a while, but if you don’t have an original or interesting story to tell, you have no movie. And even if the first half-hour is jaw-dropping, the remaining three half-hours simply hurt your ass. There is only one truly neato concept in “Night Watch,” but it hit me mid-way through that it is stolen from “Lord of the Rings” (how is entering “The Gloom” not the same as when Frodo puts on the Ring?) Some groovy shots, yeah — I certainly recommend this to anyone on drugs who wants to see cool images. And props must go out to whomever decided that the English subtitles should move around the screen, fade in and out, turn red, change size, etc. (I think using subtitles as a quasi-diagetic graphic element is basically without precedent.) But I won’t be lining up for the sequels.
I may be wrong – but I seem to remember that denzel washington movie where he’s a bodyguard for Dakota Fanning (Man on Fire) used animated subtitles.
Didn’t Ocean’s Twelve use them too?
Comment by kori — March 15, 2006 @ 12:50 pm
I didn’t see Man on Fire. I saw Ocean’s 12 recently, but don’t remember animated subtitles, but that sounds like something that would be in there.
The subtitles in Night Watch are flyin’ all over the place, changing color, fading out. . .it is wild.
Comment by Jordan Hoffman — March 15, 2006 @ 9:01 pm