A flawed but attention-grabbing feature debut from Danish director Ole Bornedal, NIGHTWATCH offers jaded viewers the kind of thriller Alfred Hitchcock might have taken on had he not been reigned in by studio censorship and social taboos.
Law student Martin Bork (Nikolai Coster Waldau) takes a job as night watchman in a large hospital's mortuary that's well-stocked with the recent victims of an elusive serial sex killer. Off duty, Martin hangs out with jovial Jens (Kim Bodnia), a competitive law-school pal who's into practical jokes and abusing women, and as the murders escalate, Martin begins to suspect that his friend might have something to do with them. When Martin discovers the corpse of one of the murdered women missing from the morgue, he calls the police, but by the time they arrive, the body is back on its slab. Martin tells Inspector Wormer (Ulf Pilgaard) that Jens may be connected to the slayings, but the police already have a suspect: Martin.
NIGHTWATCH begins on a darkly humorous note of unease, and Bornedal, who composes shots for maximum claustrophobic tension, deftly avoids blatant gore when a more effective suggestion of the unspeakable will do. Yet NIGHTWATCH disappoints; the identity of the killer is immediately obvious, and only when he's purposefully exposed can NIGHTWATCH drop its futile whodunit aspect and follow a heightened, Hitchcockian vein of suspense: "We see who the villain is, but when will the other characters?" Then again, where Hitchcock grants his protagonists a degree of intellect, Martin is a male bimbo: Handsome, horny, blond, and stupid enough for the killer's -- and Bornedal's --conspiracy to work. A notable box-office success at home and abroad, the film even drew the attention of Hollywood, which offered a 1998 remake starring Ewan McGregor and directed by Bornedal.
