Dima is the nerdy kid from the poor part of town. He's a top student and falls for the pretty new student, but has to compete for her affections with the flashy rich kid with a Mercedes. For his birthday, Dima's dad gives him a car, a beat up Volga that was found abandoned in an old Cold War bunker. After a run-in with a visiting entrepreneur and industrialist, who also happens to be trying to mine diamonds from deep under Moscow, Dima takes a job as a flower delivery courier using his newly acquired car. Then one day he discovers the car has a secret left over from a Cold War experiment – the car can fly. In order to earn enough money to impress the girl he becomes very self-centred until something happens (think Spider-Man/Batman) that makes him realise the error of his ways and motivates to use his superpowered car for good, earning him the title Black Lightning.
It's a fairly contrived story that is clearly influenced by US comics and movies, with lots of appeal for the local audiences (it domestically out-grossed HARRY POTTER and TWILIGHT), but has that naïve feeling that you get with Bollywood takes on the genre (minus the song and dance routines). The effects are quite well done, but don't have the same polish as NIGHT WATCH, but Bekmambetov is slated to direct a US remake after he has done WANTED 2 and ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER.
In the UK we are, for the most part, a pretty sophisticated cinema audience when it comes to watching foreign films. We are more than happy to read subtitles, and when they are presented with the graphic sophistication of Night Watch, then so much the better. However, this film is aimed at a young adult audience whose declining attention spans won't be overly impressed by the reading part as it distracts from the action and eye candy. This is a bit of a sweeping generalisation and there are the hardcore anime fans that are an exception who will demand original language and won't accept sub-standard dub tracks either. Unfortunately, this direct to DVD/Blu-ray has neither the cool subs nor a decent dub. While the big animation studios manage to hire stellar voice-over casts, the same attention is not given to dubbing foreign films as Europe and Asia give to Hollywood movies, where it as art form that can often improve on the original. Watch Arnie or JCVD in Italian and you'll believe they can act. Sadly, this is not the case with this film. Being a rather trite film I thought I might as well watch it in English, but quickly turned it back to sub-titles. Not only was the dub acting substandard but there were no onscreen translations of important onscreen text, such as newspaper headlines, if subtitles is turned off. It's a small thing but it makes a big difference.
Not exactly sure who it is aimed at, but overall it is a reasonably entertaining film that doesn't break any new ground, at least not outside of Russia, and it may leave you shouting at the screen on occasions with the lack of logic.
Special features are the usual behind the scenes (in Russian) and deleted scenes.
BLACK LIGHTNING is released on DVD and Blu-ray by Universal Pictures on September 6 and can be ordered from Play and all good retailers.