It's not every day that Hollywood descends on Tbilisi. Sure, Renny Harlin is not the star action director he was in the early 90s when he was making films like "Die Hard 2" and "Cliffhanger." And Andy Garcia is no longer at the top of Hollywood's A-list. But by the way Georgia reacted to their arrival, you'd think Steven Spielberg and Brad Pitt had come to town.

Garcia's visit -- he's playing President Mikheil Saakashvili in an as-yet untitled movie Harlin is directing about last year's Georgia-Russia war -- dominated newscasts and filled newspapers here for most of the week. Tbilisi's top hotel buzzed with gossip as tanned Hollywood-types in expensive suits roamed the halls.

Georgia's government pulled out all the stops to accommodate the production, allowing Garcia to be filmed in the presidential residence and shutting down central Tbilisi to recreate a mass rally during the war. Some reports say the government even loaned tanks and soldiers for the production's action scenes.

From early footage, Garcia seems to do a credible job of portraying the flamboyant Saakashvili. There is enough of a resemblance and Garcia manages to capture Saakashvili's quirky mannerisms. Cuban-born Garcia struggles with the accent though, making Saakashvili sound a little too much like Al Pacino's Scarface. See YouTube footage here

Harlin insists the film, which follows an American journalist covering the conflict, will be more than an action movie and will have a strong 'anti-war' message.

With a pro-Saakashvili lawmaker as one of the movie's producers, he may find it tough to shake the idea that the film will push only Georgia's version of events.

Moscow and Tbilisi have waged a huge international public-relations battle over the war, blaming each other for sparking the conflict.

Russian television has already shown its own action film based on the war, "Olympus Inferno" which featured an American entomologist and Russian journalist caught up in the conflict. See subtitled YouTube trailer here

With its foreign cast and Hollywood production values, Harlin's version is bound to get more attention when it's released next spring. It's unclear how widely the film will be distributed, but in Tbilisi's cinemas at least, it's sure to be a hit.

In this blog, journalists of global news wire AFP blog about the news they report and the challenges they face covering events from Baghdad to Beijing, the White House to Darfur. Michael Mainville is AFP's correspondent in the Caucasus, covering Armenia Azerbaijan and Georgia.