The Guardians

As a Russian I'm really offended by this film. Firstly it doesn't have any originality. Russia is showed here very bad. Only one joke about "borsh" and bear-guy is not Rissia. Also characters don't have any background and motivation. Main enemy too. And if a can forgive this things, bad work of sound-operator and terrible assamblaje are absolutely unforgivable. As a result, horrible script, horribe actor's playing, pointles dialogs. It's even not a parody.. It's even not a superhero movie.. Only one good thing is a song in the beginning.

There was some potential in this tale of four superheroes created by the Russian government during the Cold War; that have to stay hidden until needed; but the movie sadly has very very lazy writing and even poorer editing. The FX are acceptable (the last Avengers was not much better and cost 50 times more); but the characters are pure stock. Forced; unsympathetic and underwritten. Action scenes are not spectacular as they were supposed to be; and villain motivations (or goals) are not that clear.

In brief; perhaps next time with better production and writing they will make a better movie; but just one is just a curiosity.

Felt like leaving the cinema after the first 15 minutes if we weren't out in a group for a birthday celebration. No creativity, no individuality. Tried too hard to be a Marvel movie but fell short with each element a good movie should have. The sets and CG were rather poor for these past 2 centuries' standard. Patchy storyline/editing. My friends and i agreed that perhaps the best actor with the most natural acting was the old professor. Closed my eyes half the time but even the lines were so dull. Finally felt energised when the movie ended. 80% of the cinema crowd bolted from their seats and headed for the exits without seeing the post-credit scenes. I am not looking forward to the sequel even with the Chinese participation...

I can't get past the fact this film has a bear man hybrid with a chain gun. How cool is that?

Guardians has taken a bit of a bollocking from some reviewers. I think some of the comments are fair but others I don't agree with.

Firstly, this is not a bad film. Its reasonably well made with mostly worthwhile special effects and decent action sequences. Some of the fantasy tech employed by the baddies and the super-hero's is pretty cool too and shows imagination.

On the downside it does "wallow" a bit and get stuck in excessive dialogue at times, especially in the middle of the film. There is too much time spent on research "techno-babble" and extraneous back story elements. This tends to rob the film of some of the pace and momentum it sorely needs, as an action flick.

Of course the inevitable comparison is US made action films, especially those from the Marvel universe. I'd say The Guardians is better than some and worse than others. For me, it falls in the "middle" of the line-up of US counterparts, which is not a bad effort, given Russia is not known as a producer of the this kind of action fare. On that basis, I give this flick a seven out of ten.

'Guardians,' or 'Zashchitniki,' as the Russian title would have it, has a reputation that precedes it. I recall well watching the first trailer prior to its release, and being intrigued. I also remember how quickly and thoroughly the completed film was panned, across the board. Yet my curiosity could only be sated by seeing it for myself. More than anything else, I'm disappointed.

In both its writing and direction, 'Guardians' is direct and unsubtle to the point of absurdity. Every possible bit of exposition is delivered in the first few minutes, including opening credits that cement the nature of these superheroes and visualize their origin. This opening sequence is at once adequate in its purpose, while also perhaps too indiscreetly showing its hand - moviegoers don't actually want to see how the meat gets made, but we get the whole picture.

Dialogue and plot points are all ham-fisted and forthright beyond all reason, disallowing the cast any opportunity to exercise their craft or meaningfully inhabit their roles. Action sequences follow this bent while also being executed with such flawless perfection as to actively shred our suspension of disbelief. Every character has perfect knowledge of anything happening; just as there's no nuance in the picture for the audience to pick up on, there are not truly any secrets in the narrative for characters to discover.

Not one scene or emotional beat is given the chance to manifest, linger, and resolve of its own accord - I don't think I've ever seen another movie as forcefully, strenuously fast-paced as this. 'Guardians' does technically possess all those elements we would expect of a modern-day superhero film, but they are glossed over with such a slippery, waxy sheen that the picture blows right past them. It wouldn't be wrong to say this feels like a parody or caricature of a comic book flick, but perhaps more to the point, it's like this movie is a supercondensed microcosm of the genre. And that's a big problem, seeing as how this style of film is all about showing us how big, grand, and expansive the universe can be in all its possibilities.

From a technical standpoint, I think 'Guardians' is actually just fine. Makeup, hair, costume design and wardrobe, set design and decoration, art direction, and fight choreography all look swell as far a I'm concerned. I think the sound design is good, and the original music of composer Georgiy Zheryakov. On the other hand, like the action sequences, special effects and computer-generated visuals mostly have the opposite problem of the typical subpar B-movie: usually we anticipate effects that fail to blend seamlessly into the real world, as seen on camera, because of how poor they are. Here, the CGI is so carefully, lovingly rendered that it looks too unbelievably impeccable to seem real.

I don't generally like to bad-mouth actors in a film - after all, they can only work with the material they're given from the writer, and the instruction imparted by the director. Moreover, knowing nothing of the cast of 'Guardians,' I don't want to make any snap judgments. But I do think it's safe to say that Andrei Gavrilov's screenplay and Sarik Andreasyan's direction conspire to rob the actors of any opportunity to actually... well, act. The whole film moves so quickly - again, distinctly and pointedly bereft of all subtlety - that the cast seems to have no significant agency at all. We've seen what world-class actors are reduced to in the films of Uwe Boll; I have no specific reason to think this situation is any different.

What's most remarkable, though, is that I really think 'Guardians' could have been a good movie. It could have been a good franchise, for that matter. As inelegantly as it's exhibited, the ideas in the narrative have fun potential that's locked away by the sheer aggressiveness and gracelessness of the film's construction. If Gavrilov, Andreasyan, and editor Georgiy Isaakyan allowed scenes, dialogue, and characters to breathe on their own, this wouldn't have been a 90-minute speed demon. For all the narrative content slammed through the funnel of its abbreviated runtime, 'Guardians' could and should have easily, actually, been 2 hours long at the bare minimum, or even a couple movies in and of itself - to say nothing of possibly developing additional features from the threads left dangling at this movie's conclusion. I would have liked to have learned more about these characters, and to have seen this cast flex their muscles. As it is, that just wasn't possible.

It's worth noting, in passing, that as viewers our attention is so enraptured with the indelicate presentation that by comparison we hardly notice the clear effort to ape successful Hollywood superhero features of the years preceding this production. The similarity of some scenes is unmistakable, and the Russian superheroes themselves are echoes of readily identifiable comic book properties. But in the time it takes us to process that recognition, we're already two scenes ahead, so the mimicry hardly even matters.

This is such an odd movie. I admire the concept, the narrative had potential, and I would have liked to see these ideas and this cast given real life. But for as preposterously direct, straightforward - and, once more, highly unsubtle - as the picture is, it feels like a warped facsimile of the superhero epic it could have been. It's a shame, really.

'Guardians,' or 'Zashchitniki,' is far from the worst movie you've ever going to see. Yet so unsound, deficient, and inhibitive is its build that one could be forgiven for thinking there was conscious intent by the film-makers to undercut their own production.

Recommended for curious, persevering, and open-minded audiences.