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3 stars (out of four)

"Day Watch," part two of a planned trilogy based on the novels of co-screenwriter Sergei Lukyanenko, is Russia's all-time top post-Soviet-era movie grosser ($30 million) , and it returns us to the bloody, high-torque world of "Night Watch," (the previous champ, at $16 million). Once again, we see director Timur Bekmambetov's contemporary Moscow, a ghastly urban sprawl overrun with vampires, supernatural police, wild special effects--including a car chasing up and around a skyscraper wall--and high-powered graphics. I liked the first movie a lot and was cooler toward the second. But I've got to admit that "Day Watch" is one hell of a movie.

In "Night Watch," we learned the set-up: The world is overrun with supernatural beings divided into the forces of light, or Night Watch, that patrols the night, and the forces of darkness, or Day Watch, policing the day. Each group operates according to an ancient treaty struck to keep a balance between good and evil, responsibility and freedom, lightness and dark.

Now, after a Moscow-in-chaos smash finish in the first movie, the main characters are back, led by "Night Watch" hero Anton Gorodetsky (burning-eyed Konstantin Khabensky), a "forces of light" guy whose teenage son Egor (Dima Martynov) is the long-awaited messiah whose eventual ascension to "Great Other" status may upset the balance between the two forces. Egor is now in the hands of the "forces of darkness" leader Zavulon (Victor Verzhbitskiy) and, in "Day Watch," this triggers all kinds of strife with Anton's Night Watch group, still run by Geser, a fatherly bureaucrat type played by Vladimir Menshov.

Vying for this movie's super-feminine honors, meanwhile, are sweet Night Watch gal Svetlana (Maria Poroshina), vixenish Day Watch femme fatale Alisa (Zhanna Friske) and sorceress Olga (Galina Tyunina)--who at one point, switches bods with the old Geser.

Got all that straight? Anyway, the key gimmick of "Day Watch" is the Chalk of Fate, a scribbling talisman that once belonged to the old historical tyrant Tamerlane and has the ability to change history with a few quick squeaks. This proves incredibly useful at the end.

If you watch the two movies together ("Night Watch" recently came out on DVD), they gain by the proximity, mostly because the plot is so convoluted; the third part of the trilogy, "Dusk Watch," will supposedly wrap everything up. Though "Day Watch" seems less shocking and overwhelmingly strange than "Night Watch," it's another rocking mix of gritty thriller and glitzy sci-fi, once again in the vein of the director Bekmambetov's idols Quentin Tarantino and the Wachowski brothers.

Bekmambetov and Lukyanenko paint a scathing portrait of contemporary Moscow, showing the city at its most violent and corrupt and then some--and playfully converting into movie warfare the political-social schisms between Russian liberals (the Night Watch) and the freer-spirited, more anarchistic Day Watchers. The movie suggests that both sides, whose real-life equivalents were opposed to the old Communist bureaucratic elite, are closer to each other than to the oblivious citizenry around them. There are two other divisions here that the new movie implies: the hip and the square. And both the Night and Day Watchers seem card-carrying members of hip Russia.

mwilmington@tribune.com

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'Day Watch'

Directed by Timur Bekmambetov; screenplay by Sergei Lukyanenko, Bekmambetov, based on the novel by Lukyanenko; photographed by Sergei Trofimov; edited by Dmitri Kiselev; music by Yuri Poteyenko; art direction by Valery Victorov, Mukhtar Mirzakeyev, Nikolay Ryabtsev; produced by Konstantin Ernst, Anatoly Maximov. A Fox Searchlight Pictures release; opens Friday at the Music Box Theatre. Running time: 2:20. MPAA rating: R (for violence).

Anton Gorodetsky - Konstantin Khabensky

Svetlana - Maria Poroshina

Geser - Vladimir Menshov

Olga - Galina Tyunina

Zavulon - Victor Verzhbitskiy

Alisa - Zhanna Friske

Egor - Dima Martynov

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