Many bizarre elements help to form the crazy kaleidoscope of Day Watch. For example, a parrot turns into a human and rides around in a limo; a yo-yo contains the power to destroy a major city; and a piece of chalk possesses the power to rewrite history. But I'm not surprised this Russian fantasy epic is so insane. After all, its predecessor, Night Watch, piled so much on its plate in terms of story, it shrugged off the Apocalypse in the same way Tokyo seems to shuffle those chronic Godzilla attacks under the rug.

Day Watch plunks viewers right back into the middle of director Timur Bekmambetov's world of the Others, a collection of various supernatural beings that has split into the Light and Dark factions. Our story begins as Anton (Konstantin Khabensky), a Light Other, is scambling to cover up the tracks of his son Yegor (Dima Martynov), a youngster who turned to the Dark at the end of the first film. Yegor is now attacking humans without provocation. A a bigger problem, however, soon surfaces when a Dark Other is found murdered, and all of the evidence points to Anton as the culprit.

Such an incident is all the Dark needs to break a  centuries-old truce with the Light, leading Anton and his colleagues to ponder the possibility he's being framed as part of a complex grab for power. In any case, Anton goes on the run to prove his innocence. He knows the key to putting an end to all the chaos lies with the Chalk of Fate, an unassuming object which gives its user the ability to change his or her destiny forever.

If both Watch films have proved anything, it's that the world could use a little of whatever the Russians are apparently smoking. There's hardly another reasonable explanation for why they've gobbled up these tales like candy (Night Watch outgrossed the last Lord of the Rings film in its native country), while the rest of the world is still trying to discern who's who. Day Watch  at least comes across as a little more straightforward than its predecessor. With most of the story's background and mythology already established in the first movie, Bekmambetov is given the opportunity to get down to business and launch the characters into another funkalicious flight of fantasy.

Whether or not Night evoked any of your emotional investment will be a good indicator of how much Day should enthrall you, so for those who thought the former was a trippy but diverting walk in the park, the latter delivers more of the same. This similar setup of bizarre visuals set against an epic battle of good versus evil that gets to the point faster wouldn't be so bad, except that instead of confusing the audience with a complex mythos, Day Watch does so by playing a game of Hot Potato with the plot.

At any given moment, the story switches from being a noirish murder mystery (in which Anton's soul is transferred into the body of a female Other for some unknown reason) to a drama centered on Anton's attempts to be a good father and to hunt again for the Chalk of Fate. When Bekmambetov sticks to a plot thread, he gets some mileage and entertainment out of it, but his habit of jumping around from sub-genre to sub-genre becomes more than a little irritating, especially when the running time goes on for an exhausting two and a half hours. 

I certainly didn't have a dreadful time watching Day Watch, as Bekmambetov kept me involved thanks to some inventive effects, an ambitious spirit, and a sort of shabby, lived-in environment that suits the world of the Light Others perfectly. But, although this film and its big brother Night were homeland blockbusters, perhaps the key to making the planned third Watch an international success is to cut out the thematic fat in a big way, which could lead to delivery of a lean, mean, hallucinatory machine.

MY RATING: ** 1/2 (out of ****)

(Released by Fox Searchlight; not rated by MPAA.)