Guardian of the Realm (2004)

To me, this movie is perfection.

Memorable, crazy movie

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

*Spoiler/plot- 2004, In the city, evil lurks in the shadows. Two 'Guardians' also known as demon hunters are on the trial of an occult group who has stolen some mysterious magical artifacts. They have unwittingly released the ancient and powerful demon god Virago upon Los Angeles in the form of a beautiful woman. Its up to the two demon hunters and their powerful spy-like organization to stop this ancient evil before a horde of demons take over. If they fail, there will be Hell on Earth.*Special Stars- Glen Levy, Tanya Dempsey, Lana Piryan *Theme- The right teamwork will conquer any evil.*Trivia/location/goofs- Downtown street areas of Los Angles and along the LA river.*Emotion- The male lead did his work admirably. This is a boring knock-off of the current vampire, demons, and very dated 'dungeons and dragons' film themes. A bore. Top notch film effects and movie production values but the female actresses seem to put little into their camera 'acting' and much more into their makeup and 'posing' for camera like amateur low paid models. Totally forgettable for a film they wished to be a franchise of many movies. It has the look of a film based video game.

At the beginning, there is a scene at a Goth disco, the "Devil's Den", and I thought: 'Oh no, this is going to be another flick where somebody invited his untalented pale-faced goth friends... who think they look so cool in moonlight that they must be filmed'! Fortunately, I was wrong. "Guardian of the Realm" develops into a funny but violent genre flick, looking rather like an episode from a TV series than a big movie, but despite the mediocre effects it shows quite a lot of effort was put into it. Camera work, lights and music (atmospheric strings, not too much rock) are all done well, and the story contains enough sense of ironic humor to make you forget that this isn't the first time ghost-hunters fight a demon creature. The running time of 110 minutes was flying by and never felt like it was too long. Glen Levy, a former stuntman from series such as "Xena", "Hercules" and "Cleo 2525", becomes a sympathetic hero. Obviously, he gets a lot of fights, too, because that's what he does best. So, what I can say about "Guardian of the Realm": I enjoyed it, want to watch it again some time, even if it's not the biggest thing since "Blade".

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...

SPOILER: NOT ABOUT STORY JUST EFFECTS & PRODUCTION Everything about this movie reeks of cheap sets, props, effects, sound recording & post, too long of shots on too long of inexperienced actors, but gosh, lots of character demons, gore, some action, a decent attempt at humor... not bad.As a cg artist I saw all their cg attempts, all cheesy, but used... and used... and I'm just impressed these guys went for it... I mean the sparks and clouds and fire and meteors and computer interface stuff. And as for demon designs, wow! I'm impressed with the sub demons, the pure demon, the warrior demon, the shaman demon, the pet demon, the she demon... etc... I mean, not just one silly monster, but a whole bunch of power ranger things, and they all made sense, as an entourage. And why not! So as schlocky as digital feels, as cheap as digital audio sounds, as glaring as video colors are, as painfully obvious gel lights glare... they went for it and i hope they get a chance to go for it again with more money. But I hope they keep to the same fun schlock! Good luck guys.And love all the downtown L.A. sites, brings back memories, and all the sites in my neighborhood of Hollywood. You guys stayed here to do it, awesome.