In Brief

DAY WATCH
R, 137 minutes

It's a bulletproof concept: two races of witches, were-tigers, psychics, and vampires, one good and one evil, secretly living among humans and policing one another via rival bureaucratic ministries. Make the movie Russian (secret police? labyrinthine government agencies? who knows more about them?) give it a gleaming shine, and you've got what could be the ultimate summer blockbuster.

Too bad, then, that Timur Bekmambetov's "Day Watch" is a big, boring dud.

Together (as a sequel) with Mr. Bekmambetov's "Nightwatch," "Day Watch" has become the champion of the new Russian box office, and Fox Searchlight eagerly scooped up both pictures, giving them re-edited American releases with hyperactive subtitles that slip and slide as they mimic the mood of the dialogue. But no amount of clever subtitling can save "Day Watch" from vanishing down its own navel.

The story is incomprehensible, with the beleaguered Anton (Konstantin Khabensky) starring as a member of the Nightwatch (they police the dark side) who is simultaneously worried about: a) his child, Yegor, who defected to the forces of evil after Anton tried to have him mystically aborted; b) his trainee, Svetlana, who has incredibly powerful gifts; c) the location of the Chalk of Fate, which can rewrite history; d) a series of murders for which he is being framed; and e) the bloody-minded Zavulon (the leader of the Day Watch) who wants him dead. The movie collapses under the weight of all this plot within the first 45 minutes.

But scenes of men turning into crows, a car driving up a building, and a huge cavalry battle are so thoroughly bonkers that they're intoxicating. If only the whole movie were as coherently imagined as the ending, in which, during the space of a camera flash, tiny, flying balls multiply endlessly, shred Moscow, and unleash a Ferris wheel that rolls down the street, crushing fleeing humans like a happy Godzilla.