ust a few years ago, who would have thought Thai cinema would have reached such an international status. Not only have they created a slew of cult classic movies, but more and more movies are being produced each year in Thailand. Some of these new movies are also generating a pretty good hype among Asian movie fans. Who would have also thought that Thailand would even try to create a Kaiju movie, a genre in which Japan has always been the undefeated champion in. Other countries have tried several times to create a monster of their own, though, most have failed miserably.

The mixed bag that is GARUDA, which surprisingly had good results at the Thai box office in the year of its release, cannot be considered a failure, but is also far from being a very convincing success. Even if we can forgive the limited budget, which is totally understandable, we cannot forgive the very bad plot, annoying characters, unbalanced pacing and repetitive visual effects. 

First off, the story is not engaging at all. You are always wondering where the story wants to go as it never reaches any real climactic moment. You hope that things turn out into something better, but then everything goes into cliché mode. The motivations of the many characters are too obscure and their development is plan and ordinary (and that’s when they’re not simply annoying), especially the two main archaeologists, Leena Pierre and her partner, Tim. How a guy like Tim could have completed his High School studies with an IQ so low is simply beyond explanation. As for Leena, the story tries to make us feel sorry for her when she has to face close-minded bureaucratic decisions about her avant-garde archaeologist theory and Thai/French heritage. However, that pity is forgotten pretty fast when Leena is put in the fire of action as her decisions and reactions are simply driven more by stupidity than intelligence.

At least the military team had decent character design. The team leader was the most interesting and charismatic of the lot. But again the movie deceive us as we never have chance to really see a great action battle with the military facing Garuda as most of them are stalked one by one. Most of the time using the same over view camera shot diving on the head of the character. 

Another annoying thing was that most of the movie takes place in the cave and the dark undergrounds of a city. It is only at the end of the movie that Garuda finally points his head out to the surface and goes berserk on the Bangkok population. That moment of joy doesn’t last very long, unfortunately. Though, restraining Garuda to the underground city was probably due to budget limitations, which would be understandable.

The design and animation of the monster Garuda were at least well done and very entertaining, but again, only if you can cope with the limitations of the budget. The only deception is that Garuda’s screen time is less than 30 minutes, which is obviously not very long for a movie of almost 2 hours. 

In all, GARUDA is an average action/fantasy movie, which is worth a viewing for fans of monster movies, but unfortunately, with its many problems it is not a movie that will be remembered for along time.