Commercial director Bekmambetov goes the Wachowski brothers one better, pulling out action movie stops we never knew existed in this furiously inventive, savvy, pop-culture embedded tale of modern-day Moscow in the midst of a savage war. For hundreds of years the forces of light (the warlocks) and darkness (the vampires) have managed to maintain a wary but relatively peaceful coexistence. When a renegade warlock battles a vampire on his own, he breaks the truce between the rival orders, the first step on the road to total war. Drenched in Gothic atmosphere and techno sleekness, replete with pulse-pounding action and rich with a mythology all its own, Night Watch is altogether mesmerizing.