Guardian of the Realm

Guardian is what I always looked and hoped for when I was as kid - a buried treasure, a hidden surprise. Remember when you took a chance and rented those films with the questionable covers, and nine out of ten times, you got burned? Not this time. Guardian is obviously a labor of love, by people who love the movies, and that love, passion, and fun shows in every frame of it.

Yes, the flick is low-budget, but it does amazing things with what amounts to pro-sumer equipment that most anyone has access to. Young filmmakers, take note: you will spend many viewings trying to figure out how they did some of this stuff. Most films operating at this level are simple dramas with talking heads, or make no attempt at large-scale stunts or effects, but not the guys who made this flick - they went nuts. Check out the references to Johnny Quest, Anime, Mad Max, Chop-Socky, Ghostbusters, South Park, and if you look very closely, even Blade Runner!

Never mind all of that, however - just enjoy the flick. Glen Levy is charming and aerodynamic, Tanya Dempsey gives a star-making performance and is one of the most beautiful actresses to come along in a long time, and Lana Piryan is dead-sexy, with an accent that makes you really not care if you get possessed by a demon or not. The rest of the supporting cast is either funny, handsome, or sexy, and the plot, although a bit derivative of other things, is very well constructed, and some of the dialogue is quite funny. There is a gag involving a bottle of ketchup that has to be seen to be believed.

Guardian may be the first low-budget, indie feature that I have seen try a "Hollywood" style approach to everything, instead of hedging its' bets every step of the way. Not perfect by any means, but the best "B" flick I've seen in a long time, and hopefully not the last feature that Ted Smith will make. "Stay sharp - like a razor."

to say this movie is bad is an understatement. Guardian represents everything that's possible to be wrong with a movie, that's also its sole redeeming quality. The reason I gave this movie it's single star (aside from the fact that there is no option to put 0 stars) is because it has certain educational purpose. Robert Altman, when asked which movies influenced him the most, said: "the movies I hated the most," he'd see a film and think "I'll never make a movie like that." That's the case with Guardian. Watching it makes you understand how and why a movie can be bad (or oh-my-god-it-burns-my-eye bad in this instance). There is not single aspect I can start you off with, it's bad globally: every line is a cliché stolen from Buffy, Blade, or some other B vampire movie (and the ending is a word-for-word rip off from the first Blade -- I can't spoil the movie with this, it hits the bottom on the first line); the image is terrible, either they used magnifying glass for a lens or rented a wrong camcorder, because this is not shot on film with an HDCAM, not even on HDV or DVX from the looks of it; the cinematography is ...well, I don't think they thought about lighting; the set pieces and the makeup is admirably expensive for such a low budget, but the actors wearing the suits couldn't act their way out of a noose on the day of their sentence.

At first I actually thought I was watching a rerun of a Buffy episode, but then I realized that even Buffy wasn't that bad (and there weren't any commercials!). I watched further and I couldn't believe it was on a premium channel, on cable! But seeing this piece of s$@t make it this far, I now know that any film can find distribution...

By no means was this a prefect film, but oddly enough it was very very watchable. The look of the film kind of distracts by its digital look but if it had been filmed any other way it probably would have been noted as bad. The leads were nice looking and the storyline was decent. The sets looked like they were in someones garage but were well done for what they were. The acting was OK. Not as bad as some and the acting could have used a little more rehearsal but the actions scenes were pretty good. Really enjoyed the costume of the main bad guy (girl) Nikki. Well worth a look if you have nothing better to do on a Saturday night.

So, let me start off by saying that this is not anywhere near as good as a movie with a proper budget and crew. However, for what it is, I felt like the director actually had some sense of what he was doing. The actors were at least likable and many of them came off as interested in what they were doing. While the acting itself wasn't stellar, most of the actors weren't so wooden like many other low budget movies. The lead 'demon' actress, Nikki, is played by a woman with a very thick accent and it can be a bit off-putting at times because it was obvious they only put her in for the sex appeal, but I have seen/heard much, much worse from much higher budget works (Pamela Anderson?). The two lead demon hunters worked well together and while I felt the chemistry was kind of forced by the writing, I actually felt a bit of attachment to both of them. I certainly wasn't cracking up laughing or balling my eyes out, but they were decent and fun to watch.

Watching this now in 2020, it would be unfair of me to say that the CG effects were terrible. Even by 2004 standards, this would have been panned badly, but I think for what they had to work with, they kept a lot of the effects to a minimum and that actually worked in their favor. They used a lot of nice looking costumes for the armor and demon effects and while in some instances you could plainly see they were just foam and rubber, it wasn't so bad that it distracted you from the rest of the movie. If I had to pin a look to this, I would say this looks about on par with the likes of Bibleman (a show I have not watched, but have seen enough of to get the idea). However, what makes this a step above is actually taking the actors off a soundstage to actual locations and having real things like bikes, cars, motorcycles, weather, etc and actually making them work rather than having the actor in front of a blue screen with a blurry background flying by. A lot of the demon makeup was very well done, especially the demon god when he shows up. Though, I will say one thing, the added "clink" sound they added to the armored demon was very annoying and was not needed, but the armor was neat looking and the actor playing in the suit managed to make it look like it was a big, hulking demon wearing armor.

The fight scenes, for the few there are, actually were lots of fun to watch. Everyone that had to fight actually had some very well done choreography, while (again) not up to standards with a well polished Hollywood movie, it was apparent that the fight scenes were done over the course of hours/days rather than "pull some punches and we'll cut the scene together". Some actual acrobatics were used and the sword fight in the end had very nice, thought out moves that made it fun to watch. There were a few moments where it was bordering on 'Power Rangers' type fighting, but it wasn't overdone or too over the top.

The story itself certainly wasn't deep or provocative and honestly, I don't think it needed to be. The writer(s) and director at least put some thought into the plot and while you might be able to guess what's going to happen next, you might not mind because it's done well enough that you can be like "that's how I would have done it", but there are a few points where it managed to surprise me with something even though I was able to call out a scene just prior, they would throw something in just a bit extra to be like "you saw this coming, but not this...". There are a few moments where a plot point won't go anywhere, but I get that from a lot of these movies, so it's to be expected (the one where Nikki up-chucks something into the demon's mouth is neither explained nor brought up again after it happens). One thing that the plot suffers from is a lot of exposition, while not as bad as some movies, there are a couple moments that could have been explained better or in a different way, but that's only a nitpick.

A lot of the camera work we done well enough, some establishing shots to set up a scene, framing was decent without any strange angles to make it "look like art" or edgy. Sound mixing was ok, I would have liked for a better voice for Nikki when she breaks out into her demon voice and the aforementioned 'clink' footsteps of the armored demon were really bad. I didn't notice an real issues with voices otherwise, music didn't overlap and drown out dialogue (as can be an issue in a lot of these movies) and I didn't see any boom mics getting in the way.

Overall, just a fun movie to waste a couple hours on. If you're expecting another "Blade" or "Ghostbusters", this won't be for you, but if you like cheesy B-movies that actually have some sort of effort put forth, you might actually enjoy this.

The story is not particularly original but it could have benefited for shorter runtime and a better climax. It is obvious the budget was very low but intentions were fine. Acting is decent and some scenes are quite elaborated. The most interesting thing of the movie es Glen Levy; a stuntman capable of decent acting and a few good action scenes. They guy has some style that deserve a better movie. In brief; it is not a great picture but I saw a lot worse and less entertaining.