Garm Wars - L'ultimo druido

The 2 star review is right, there's no beginning, there's no end, there's barely a story. It's more like a showpiece for the CGI studio than a movie. I finished watching it and really had no idea what just happened.

To be fair the effects, model creation, and scores are fantastic, unfortunately too much time is devoted to them instead of actual character/story development.

Apparently the story universe is created by the director/writer just for this movie, I have to say it has good potential, but this movie did not take advantage of it. Hopefully we will see a sequel to better develop it.

Hey, if you are bored on a Saturday night, why not, certainly not the worst movie out there.

This production is not for everyone, and I admit to not being particularly interested in the integrated video game / CGI type of fantasy sci-fi production myself, but this was interesting enough to warrant a watch, and I'm not regretting having done so.

Admittedly, the plot is rather clumsily constructed, which detracts somewhat from what this could have been.

Having said that though, the actual artistry committed to this creation is something to behold.

Having been confined to a relatively limited budget, this was an impressively ambitious effort, perhaps overly so, but it is visually a spectacular expression of the artform.

For me at least, Mélanie St-Pierre's character as Khara made the film. Without her, not sure how well this effort would have fared.

To be fair, this production starts out very strong, with Khara and her cadre of clonettes on board their warcraft, the inital scenes with the mysteroius Driud entity and it's wily cohort, prying their way into the AI core, the invasion battle scenes . . . but OK, no spoilers here.

But then, as the story begins to stretch out as a meandering journey through various travails, it just seems to lose steam along the way, with various action scenes tossed in as props to keep the excitement level artificially inflated.

By the ending scene (the film is divided into a series of acts), it just seems that the writing was getting tired, and just had to throw in the proverbial "to be continued" invading hordes of the whatevers as a sort of departing plot prop (no spoiler here, there are numerous other details not included in this description).

It's somewhat unfortunate, as there were several potential story threads and philosophical ponderings which could have been much more richly enabled and elaborated upon, but were left somewhat vacant.

Garm Wars is an interesting template which could be further developed, but definitely could benefit from more finely honed story crafting to match the remarkably rich visual motifs into which this template has been enmeshed.

I want to give its creators credit for a fascinating effort, and wouldn't be against seeing another, more well developed (and funded) effort in this direction.

I'm torn between a 6 and 7 rating . . . but am giving a benefit of a doubt, let's go with a 7.

OK so this film is insane. For two reasons:

1- for being utter nonsensical fantasy gibberish 2- for investing as much time, effort and money into developing such a bonkers story into such an amazingly vivid spectacle of CGI beauty.

Nothing about this film made much of any sense to me. I've just finished watching it and literally have NO idea what a Garm is. Absolutely none. I understood nothing about this film other than some mad old bloke and some woman with a gun were on the run, accompanied by some other bloke with an unreasonably large gun.

Now, I said this film was visually beautiful, and it is. There are some breathtaking scenes in it. Unfortunately, to balance that out and reinforce the rating of a majestic four that I have given it, they have countered these high action scenes with two really, REALLY long scenes of the aforementioned people just sitting on their buttocks discussing the also aforementioned nonsensical drivel.

So the only way I would recommend this film to you is if you were really high, and even then I would suggest fast forwarding through the beach scene and any other time they seem to be too focused on the act of talking. The only strength of this film lies in its aesthetic beauty and I will admit the dog was the only element of bafflement that I found entertaining.

..and if you aren't high, then do yourself a favour and pick any other film in the world.

Animation can not solve everything , story can be better but crachters, names, action was not good.

Garm Wars is a cyberpunk sci fi with a distinctly Japanese flavour. This is perhaps not surprising given the director is Japanese.

This story mixes a lot of cyberpunk elements, high tech, social disruption in the form of a war of attrition as well as spiritual elements, with the presence of a menacing, seemingly omnipotent, alien other.

Perhaps, whats most conspicuous in this fantasy outing, is the special effects. A lot of work has gone into the technological mechanisms and machinery that dominate this world. The effects are of a high standard and very intricate but at times they tend to make this film feel overly busy. So much so, that its easy for the senses to feel a little overloaded at times.

The acting is of a good standard and includes a solid cast, with some well known faces, such as Lance Hendrickson and Kevin Durand. There's plenty of action too, especially early on to keep things interesting.

All in all a worthwhile watch that looks to have set itself up for a sequel. Seven out of ten from me.