Garm Wars - L'ultimo druido

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.

In line with The Fifth Element and Forbidden Planet - another movie whose plot will bend your mind with something unusual...

Difficult to comment without writing a spoiler, I can say I would love to discuss this movie with someone - it has a lot going on in it... and it does begin and end making you wish there was a lot more 'known'. This movie could have been stretched a lot longer with more added - yet, by the end, I enjoyed the story and the feelings it left me with. More could ruin the 'what's next' feelings - and besides, wanting more leaves me with a really strong desire for both prequels and sequels? This film could be the start of a very successful series... The visual and sound impact of this movie was amazing - some totally different, stunning and fantastic visuals and sounds... I enjoyed it - and hope you do too.

I saw this movie the first time by accident while surfing through channels and thought it was a horrible, disjointed mess. However I was intrigued by the music. Great soundtrack, like nothing I had ever heard before. Was searching for information on the music and started reading about the movie plot and the symbolism involved so I decided to re-watch the film with that perspective. The movie was very good but felt I missed a few things. On my third viewing I purchased it because I liked it so much. Kevin Durand was excellent! The chemistry between his character, Skellig, and Khara was really good as well. I would love to purchase the soundtrack but unfortunately it is unavailable at this time. Give this film a chance....it is truly unique. I wish they would make a sequel.

I am a big fan of Mamoru's work. He has a specific style in which many aspects of the story are not explained. Here we have Final Fantasy like computer graphics with live actors and one Basset hound running around. Very unique vehicles, ships and armor design. Quite good action/battle scenes. But plot is hard to understand and should have more detail, it is hard to follow since you are dropped in the middle of entire culture clash with just scraps of information to go on.

I enjoyed it since it was like watching newer Final Fantasy movies, some scenes reminded me of Avalon (also Mamoru's work). And give it 7 out of 10 especially because of amazing graphics and fights scenes. Dialog could use improvement.

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.