When blockbusters go RussianBy Erin E. Arvedlund (NYT)Thursday, July 22, 2004

MOSCOW: Russia's first homemade blockbuster movie, “Night Watch,” is beating out American feature films like “Spider-Man 2” and “Troy” here, and the director and producer admit - proudly - that they relied on a time-tested Hollywood formula to draw in millions of viewers.

“It was a concept,” the director, Timur Bekmambetov, said in an interview, including bloody and dazzling special effects (all-Russian programmers and postproduction, except for sound), savvy demographics (Soviet-era actors cast with contemporary television stars) and a peculiarly Russian story line that was based on the eponymous science-fiction novel by Sergei Lukyanenko.

Moreover, even some of the hard-to-impress Russian film critics are giving it a thumbs-up.

"Quite witty, sufficiently bloody, beautiful and expensive,” quips one Russian newspaper. Others compare it to “The Matrix,” “Star Wars,” even “The Lord of the Rings,” which stole the show at the Academy Awards this year.

“Night Watch” raked in 102 million rubles, $3.50 million, in its first four days, beating the previous weekend's four-day start of "Spider-Man 2," which took in $3.48 million.

And as of Monday it had grossed slightly less than "Spider-Man 2," with $8.5 million, but booked more ticket sales, with 2.2 million viewers in Russia, the Ukraine and Kazakhstan, according to the movie's producer, Konstantin Ernst.

Why is this Russian movie hotter than Hollywood's global fare? Russian audiences are hungering for movies with context and characters in which they see themselves.

“People got tired of seeing movies filmed in New York, which seemed exotic and which presented no context for their daily lives,” Ernst said.

One film's success is not necessarily a trend, but “Night Watch” is a sign that the Russian movie business is reviving after nearly 15 years of stagnation.

“Russian movies were generally art-house pictures, director-oriented, and having nothing to do with mass culture,” said Alexei Prostiakov, a film critic.

After perestroika, the movie business was in ruins, churning out B-movies with bad scripts. And after the Soviet Union collapsed, the industry nearly stopped making movies altogether, and instead greedily snapped up anything Western.

But with “Night Watch,” the filmmakers aimed for a Hollywood-style hit, hiring a top commercial director, pouring money into marketing and special effects and shooting for a summer release.

The result? “Night Watch” combines the high-tech cinematic style of “Blade” with the sinister appeal of Mikhail Bulgakov's Moscow-based novel “Master and Margarita.”

And like “The Lord of the Rings,” this Russian movie's chief marketing tool is that it produces natural-born sequels. The production company, Channel One, one of Russia's three state-controlled television and programming companies, decided to film three “Night Watch” movies back to back, and the next one, “Day Watch,” is due out in a matter of months.

There have been other well-received and profitable Russian movies, including “Boomer,” “Brigade” and “Brat.”

But “Night Watch” is different: “We have grossed more money in the first two weeks, and we have many more viewers,” Ernst said.

So far the film has grossed $8.5 million in 11 days, and that is expected to increase to at least $10 million to $12 million over the next few weeks.

That's four or five times as much as some of the more popular films of recent years.

Based on a trilogy by the science fiction author, the movie spins a supernatural tale of a thousand-year-old treaty between forces of good, or “light,” and evil, or “dark” - all against the backdrop of a modern-day metropolis.

Bekmambetov, like the book's author, hails from the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan, and he said that the film's battle between those forces of light and dark was very important to its appeal. " We had a strong Communist ideology for 70 years, then it crashed, and now we are creating a new infrastructure," he said. "And this story, Sergei's book, helps create that.”

Bekmambetov achieved his initial fame with a colorful series of television commercials for Imperial Bank, consumer goods companies such as Procter Gamble and Wimm-Bill-Dann, one of the few Russian companies now traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

The director had made other award-winning films, but he spent most of the bleak years of the 1990s doing television advertisements, when capitalism was filing the moral vacuum.

“In that time, ads were the only ideology this country had," Bekmambetov said. "It was only the art or culture creating the good and the bad.”

Advertising was key in the success of “Night Watch,” and Channel One launched an unprecedented marketing campaign prior to the premiere, proliferating hundreds of billboards and posters all over Moscow, as well as stirring trailers on evening prime-time television.

Like its Hollywood cousins, “Night Watch” has spawned a loyal, potentially cult, following.

The “Illustrated Guide” on the film's visual effects has already appeared on the Internet (www.dozorfilm.ru).

Stylistically, the movie is reminiscent of David Fincher's “Fight Club” and “Seven,” and “Terminator 2,” and is “a big step forward on the commercial side for the Russian movie business,” Postiakov said.

“I always felt a little embarrassed for Russian movies. It was like the Stone Age in terms of special effects and editing. This one? You can love it or not, but it's a very high quality film.”

The New York Times