Guardians (But Not Of The Galaxy)

Guardians (Zashchitniki) (2017)

Runtime: 89 minutes

Directed by: Sarik Andreasyan

Starring: Anton Pampushnyy, Sanjar Madi, Sebastien Sisak, Alina Lanina, Valeriya Shkirando

From: Several Russian companies

When watching a movie because its trailer became a meme goes wrong... 

I imagine that at least some of you remember the trailer that went viral a few years ago... you know, the trailer of a random Russian superhero movie and a dude turns into a bear; at least for me, how could I forget something so bizarre? Once it came out, I heard mostly bad things about this but I was hoping I could at least howl with laughter at the spectacle I was witnessing.

Sure, I did laugh a few times but overall this movie is pretty bad. Experiments by the Soviets during the Cold War created some superhumans, and indirectly lead to the creation of the villain... Bane if he had the power to control machinery. Really, he might as well have been called that. The story brings up a number of questions-such as the timeline and if any of the superhumans actually age-the movie never dwells on it so I suppose I shouldn't either.

This is effects-heavy, and when your budget is probably little more than what The Asylum spends on one of their pictures, you can just imagine how “good” all that CG looks... woof, or in the case of the furry hero that's an Incredible Hulk ripoff, roar! If you think that one hero getting laser whips in the second half is blatant enough, in the first half you see Not Bane replicate a moment that even I know is famous in comic book history, and has already been done on film before; c'mon now!

And to boot, Guardians is dumber than a stump. There are many examples I could list (such as how our heroes are given machinery to use against the bad guy that can control machinery), but the chief one is how the protagonist that is a furry's dream-who usually only has part of his upper body change into a bear-twice fully changes into one and yet when he becomes human again, his destroyed pants and boots suddenly reappear, with no explanation. While the movie occasionally did make me chuckle, overall it is a lame, poorly plotted mess that isn't really worth seeing.