Cerberus : Le Gardien de l'enfer

If nothing else I have to hand it to the creators of Cerberus who managed to mix the religions and legends of several cultures into one wild modern day plot.

Cerberus of Greek mythology as we know is the guardian of the Underworld or Hell as we call it. It seems as though back in the day or back in another day, Attila the Hun made a deal with old Scratch for an invincible sword which is said to be buried with him. But his resting place is both lost to history and is guarded by Cerberus lest someone else get Attila's invincible sword.

Well now a renegade North Korean general with a resemblance to Fu Manchu is played by Garret Sato wants the sword. It's all he needs to start on his road to world conquest. He hires an American mercenary in Greg Evigan to help get the magic blade, but the Evigan starts getting ideas of his own.

You need an archaeologist with a working knowledge of the Balkan legends to help find Attila's grave so that's where Dr. Emmanuelle Vaugier comes in. They kidnap her brother on the pretext of a gambling debt so she comes along. And Evigan has some US Army Special Ops folks looking for him headed by Sebastian Spence. They all meet up with that nasty three headed Cerberus in, where else, Transylvania.

It's imaginative, but in the end Cerberus is still utter claptrap. They should have left the poor beast alone with the Hercules series.

Emmanuelle Vaugier, Sebastian Spence and Brent Florenece star in this surprisingly good film which blends action, adventure, horror and fantasy competently. The premise is simple, Vaugier's Dr. Samantha Gaines is a leading historian and is forced into helping a villainous collector find the sword of Attila the Hun which would grant him even more power. Gaines is forced to help the villain as he has kidnapped her brother, Zach, played by Brent Florence. Gaines is helped by Jake Adams (the handsome Sebastian Spence) and his fellow adventurers, who also delve out most of the comic relief in the film. Naturally, the heroes - and the villains - eventually come across the legendary Cerebus, the three headed dog that guards Attila the Hun's tomb. From then on in, the heroes have to deal with stopping the villain and staying alive as Cerebus is hot on their tracks. The acting is decent from the leads, the scenery is okay, however the Cerebus CGI could have been better. All in all though, a fun 90 minute adventure.

This movie could have been fairly good. I wasn't expecting something spectacular, but there was, I think, potential for it to be quite good. Unfortunately, this movie turned out to be just awful. The first thing that jarred me was the camera work. The acting, editing, special effects and camera work were all just terrible. I'm not one to usually pay particular attention to things like editing and camera work, but those elements were so bad they stood out to me very quickly. As a result, I was often distracted from what was happening in the movie. As I said, I wasn't expecting a masterpiece, but I was severely disappointed by this movie. I would not personally recommend it to anyone. I didn't find one redeeming factor in this movie.

S10 Rating: * * 'Cerberus' is a pretty typical SciFi Channel presentation. An interesting premise of the infamous mythical three-headed dog protecting a sword that render the possessor invincibility. The sword was used bu Attila the Hun so that explains his conquering of the little people of his time. As usually a nefarious scheme is hatched by an equally nefarious madman who then sends some mercenaries to grab the little party favor. Of course the lead merc enjoys his taste of power and commences to do his thing while the good guys and girl deal with the dog and now the greedy merc turned madman. Oh the joys of paint-by-numbers made-for-TV cinema. The acting was ho-hum and the direction is plain. The effects were bad as you'd expect but for whatever reason I found it still watchable.

Cerberus seemed like a good idea in hindsight, but when it came to seeing it the execution spoilt any potential the film had. It does get points for the idea, some splashes of silly fun in the second half and for the hotness of Emmanuelle Vaugier. The rest however was lacking for me, and the jaw-droppingly cheap design of Cerberus is not the only bad thing. There is also some choppy editing and the film is dully lit a lot of the time. But that's not all. The dialogue is trite with very ill-judged comic relief, the climax is abrupt and devoid of thrills or tension, the story is muddled(with the second half only a little bit better than the stodgy first half), dull and often ridiculous, the characters are poorly written clichés especially the villains and on the whole the most inspired the actors get is mumbling their lines, nobody seems engaged at all with their characters or even in the film. Overall, a really mediocre movie, could've been worse but there was no real excuse to not put more effort in. 3/10 Bethany Cox