REVIEWED - NIGHT WATCH/NOCHNOI DOZOR: AFTER directing a couple of arthouse movies and more than 600 commercials, Kazakhstan-born Timur Bekmambetov confidently leaps into the mainstream with Night Watch, which has become the biggest box-office hit in Russian cinema history. His dynamic approach appears to be rooted in the belief that nothing succeeds like excess and that if you've got it, flaunt it.

A hi-tech spin on the traditional theme of good versus evil, Night Watch opens on a protracted prologue set in the late 14th century, during an epic battle between the warriors of Light and Darkness, which ends in a truce whereby these supernatural forces will patrol each other. The Night Watch oversee the nocturnal activities of the vampires (who drink vodka and blood), wizards and shape-shifters known as the Dark Ones, while the Day Watch police the forces of Light.

Cut to present-day Moscow, when an ancient prophecy becomes a reality with the revelation that a powerful Other has emerged and will be tempted by one side or the other, throwing the truce - and no less than the future of the planet - into chaos.

The narrative is based on a trilogy of best-selling Russian science-fiction novels by Sergei Lukyanenko, and it's useful for the viewer to be aware that the movie is also the first in a trilogy, for which the second film has been shot and the third is in pre-production.

In that context, given that so much of the first episode is expository, the plotting turns so unnecessarily convoluted that the movie ultimately registers as a triumph of form over substance. That form, however, is dazzling, featuring effectively used Moscow locations, virtuoso effects work and a wealth of visual ideas in its creations and design that suggests a marriage of Delicatessen and The Matrix, all frenetically edited and with admirable levels of ambition and energy. And the English subtitles are commendably inventive.