There have been plenty of blockbuster superhero movies in 2017, but only Russians have seen the craziest-looking one. Luckily, the exclusivity will soon come to an end, as the bonkers-as-hell Russian superhero movie Zashchitniki, also known as Guardians, will be released in the U.S. on home video through Shout! Factory on September 5.
This week, a listing for a U.S. Blu-ray release of Guardians surfaced on Amazon with box art bearing the Shout! Factory logo. The film, which was a box office bomb in Russia when it was released back in February, already has a few customer reviews that range from lukewarm (“It is not a super long movie, and didn’t deserve as much grief that it got,” reads one) to overwhelmingly negative (“Its sole redeeming feature was a great-looking CGI bear,” writes another, which, I mean, yeah).
Directed by Sarik Andreasyan (American Heist), Guardians was about an elite team of superhumans created during the Cold War who are called upon in the present day to defend Russia from a supernatural threat. It was conceived as a superhero movie in the style of Marvel films like The Avengers or Guardians of the Galaxy, but with original Russian superheroes who reflect different aspects of the former Soviet Union. One of them is a gun-toting grizzly bear. But the movie didn’t impress critics and consequently made only $4.7 million on a budget of $5 million (approximately 300 million in Russian Rubles).
While Guardians may not get a theatrical release anywhere else in the world, die-hard fans of the genre looking for something different may be in for a treat. Again, this movie has a bear with a machine gun. How bad could it be?
Guardians will be available in the U.S. on Blu-ray on September 5.
