Should you watch “Guardians” at weekday movie ticket prices? Okay.
Should you watch “Guardians” at weekend movie ticket prices? No.
Score: 2.8/5
Secret ending? Yes.
Running time: 100 min (~1.75 hours)
“Guardians” is a Russian superhero film in Russian.
The film revolves around a team of four superheroes who were given special powers by the government. When a government scientist goes rogue, it’s up to this team to save the day and the world.
“Guardians” is directed by Sarik Andreasyan and written by Andrei Gavrilov. It stars Sebastien Sisak (Ler), Anton Pampushnyy (Ursus), Sanzhar Madiyev (Khan), Alina Lanina (Xenia), Valeriya Shkirando (Elena Larina), and Stanislav Shirin (August Kuratov). It is rated PG13.
It’s difficult to put a finger on what’s wrong with “Guardians”. The right amount of effort and technique was put into the film, and you can’t claim that it’s a bad film outright. But there’s just something missing in the final product that causes it to miss the mark. You can’t help feeling that they’ve tried very hard though.
Highlights
An interesting perspective
I’m going to be slightly politically incorrect here and say that it’s quite interesting to watch a film being given the Hollywood treatment, except that everything is in Russian. Of particular note are the mock news flashes, which are entirely in Russian and are constantly used to deliver exposition in the film. It would be perfectly normal in English though, so it’s more for the novelty factor.
Elena’s character development
Elena (Valeriya Shkirando) may not have super powers, but that doesn’t stop her from being as formidable as a normal human might be. She also gets a surprisingly amount of character development with regard to her relationship with the Guardians. I had thought Elena would be the typical government handler, but she turned out to be a fairly rounded character in the end.
Letdowns
Inconsistent effects
While the special effects look pretty slick at times, it looks worse than what a PS2 can render in others. Ursus’ (Anton Pampushnyy) bear effects are particularly guilty of this, especially when the director decides to do a close-up. It’s a nifty idea and an ambitious standard, but the special effects are so unreliable that you never know when the next CGI prop will look like it’s rendered from a early 2000’s video game.
Hammy villain
August Kuratov (Stanislav Shirin) is a patchwork of bad villain stereotypes. It’d be all right if the film understood this and used Kuratov purely for functional purposes (like how many Marvel movies treat their villains), but nope. We’re treated to multiple scenes of Kuratov laughing, threatening, mocking, and just generally just hamming it up in his incredibly weird costume. Kuratov isn’t what we’re here to watch “Guardians” for, so the film should have focused more on the protagonist.
Convoluted opening
The problem with the opening is that it sets up an unnecessarily complicated backstory for our heroes. So is it Kuratov or his rival who created them? Why do they suddenly have inexplicable immortality and why is that part of the deal? Why is turning into a bear comparable to super speed? It’s compounded by the fact that the film is in Russian, so you need to read subtitles really quickly to understand what’s happening.
“Guardians” is more of a novelty film instead of a superhero movie.
“Guardians” opens in cinemas:
– 9 March, 2017 (Singapore)
– 8 March, 2017 (Philippines)
Marcus Goh is a Singapore television scriptwriter, having written for Police & Thief, Incredible Tales, Crimewatch, and Point of Entry. He’s also a Transformers enthusiast and avid pop culture scholar. You can find him on social media as Optimarcus and on his site.
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