Minotaur

Welcome to the CITIZEN KANE of Sci-Fi Channel movies. Not that MINOTAUR is faultless. It's just competent on so many more levels than your average Sci Fi-Schlock Fest that it appears great in comparison.

We have some actual acting going on. Granted, there is some great scenery chewing, but it's on a grand scale. There are some good effects. There are some epic looking landscapes and the occasional set. And the script and direction are actually acceptable.

On the down side, there's the same CGI overkill that seems to haunt every Sci Fi monster flick. Thankfully, this is kept to a minimum. We're also stuck in the same labyrinth/cave sets for way too long. And every so often I couldn't help feeling that plot points were being cribbed from a Terry Jones film.

But these are minor quibbles. There's some attempt here to breathe life into the monster on the loose genre. Not bad at all.

In this take on the Minotaur story, Tom Hardy is cast as Theseus (called "Theo" for some reason), shipped off to the snowy shores of the Mediterranean to be stuck in labyrinth beneath the palace of Tony Todd.

I appreciate the effort to recast the Greek legend as a modern horror story about some hot teenagers wandering around in a cave with a gigantic bull seeking to kill them. As someone who actually read these stories and return to them occasionally, I am annoyed by the changes which serve no purpose. Why change the number of proposed sacrifices, and how often? Yes, I know. This movie was not made for me. Perhaps the changes render the story more meaningful to its intended audience on the Sci-Fi Channel in some manner I do not understand.

I lived on Crete for two years so I am familiar with the story of the Minotaur and the Labyrynth. They took that story and made some monster flick about how one dude (Tom Hardy from Layer Cake) found out his girlfriend was still alive in the maze and he set out to save her and the village. I do have to say I was most impressed with th Temple and the blood-drinking leader. I was even more impressed with Queen Raphaella - Michelle Van Der Water.

Was it a complete waste? No, the special effects were good, the monster was ghastly, and the action was what you would expect from a sci-fi film. Again, worth a look for Michelle Van Der Water.

Minotaur was not a brilliant movie. And in all honesty, I wasn't expecting it to be, in fact considering SyFY'S reputation I was expecting much worse. There are problems, but to my surprise Minotaur was one of SyFy's more tolerable movies. The film surprisingly looks great, unlike other SyFy movies you can actually see and somewhat understand what's going on, the photography is not too slipshod, a decent job is done to make the setting believable and the scenery is really quite stunning. The music is another improvement, not forgettable or sluggish but often well-orchestrated with a couple of rousing moments. The main female character is also beautiful and doesn't fall into the trap of being too vapid, and while I think Tom Hardy knew the script was bad and overdid it sometimes there is an element of charisma about it that has been sorely lacking in other fantasy/adventure SyFy movies. The minotaur is rather unconvincing, with the quality coming across as choppy computer-game-ish, but I have seen far worse effects before. Besides the minotaur is quite menacing, again another improvement on other SyFy monsters. Minotaur also has a lot of faults, starting with the insipid dialogue and clichéd and personality-less(generally) characters and ending with a rather predictable and at times ridiculous story that takes time to get going in some of the cave/labyrinth sequences and Tony Todd(who was so brilliant in Candyman) overacting embarrassingly, like Danny Glover in Age of the Dragons and (I know this next example isn't SyFy but still) Jeremy Irons in Dungeons & Dragons he chews the scenery to pieces. Overall, not a brilliant movie and has a lot wrong with it but tolerable, compared to other things that SyFy have done. 5/10 Bethany Cox

Just Another Poorly Made TV Movie.

A combination of poor script, minimal SFX, and wild over-acting by Todd and company make this a pretty sad take on the well-known myth. Corn syrup blood spews and there's a lot of noise. That's about it.

I did derive a bit of pleasure from trying to sort out all the different influences on Todd's portrayal of the "psycho" potentate. It's Frank Booth ("Blue Velvet") meets Thulsa Doom ("Conan the Barbarian"), with a bit of Jabba the Hutt thrown in for good measure. Until you've seen someone taking a "hit" off a cattle skull, you haven't seen good cinema.

There's some vague hope that things will pick up, until the victims are tossed into the labyrinth. From that point forward, it's a complete waste of time...typical monster-in-a-cave fare. You could probably make a drinking game out of it, though...everyone slams a shot whenever a foam rubber rock moves.

Save your time and rent "Jason and the Golden Fleece" or some other film that is at least a little entertaining.