Minotaur (2006)

Well Deserved Praise

an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

I do like movies based on Greek myths. However, this is a really bad movie. Apart from the beautiful maymie McCoy, the presence of Rutger Hauer and the interesting first five minutes of the movie, it is all really bad.1. Minoans were not African, but white-Caucasian. 2. It is grotesque to see the bad guy inhaling some kind of drug from a bull-skull like a crack addict from the Bronx. 3. The actors are awful 4. The movie lacks a convincing story, and it has extremely poor dialogs and an even poorer script. While the special effects are not too bad and there is the occasional pretty woman, the movie is really awful. If you have read a bit of mythology, the movie makes you puke, as it is designed for a really mediocre audience. However, i suppose that you may enjoy the movie in the following cases:1. If you are drunk 2. If you are taking hallucinogenic substances on a regular basis 3. If you have a good hangover and are basically sleepy 4. If you suffer from insomnia 5. If you are between 6-10 years old and have a lot of free time.In any other case, a normal adult person wouldn't like the movie.

The reason why myths like the adventures of Ulysses, Hercules or Theseus survive thousands of years is simply that they are terrific stories worth telling. So quite obviously it was not a good idea from the start to skip the story of the Minotaur completely except that there is a beast and a labyrinth, too. No Athens, no King Minos, no Ariadne, no string for the way out. The script takes us instead to a demonic Crete where a rather African looking, drug inhaling high priest and his sister throw prisoners into the pit until some Northern barbarians start fighting back. The producers better would have made this a fantasy movie with a killer rat in the maze and omit all historical references to the Minotaur myth if they did not intend to use the best parts of it, anyway. Apart from that (and the annoying stupidity of the characters who hide from the beast by shouting a lot), "Minotaur" is an average action movie that deserves an average mark due to its good camera work, lights and editing, I give it that much.

I watched it on TV tonight, and I must say I watched it till the end, which is pretty rare for me when it comes to watching special-effects movies on TV (since I watch most 'good' SE movies in the theater).I didn't even mean to watch it, but I zapped passed it just when it started and bascily thats what kept me interested; the atmosphere, lighting etc was interesting. It starts of rather slow in my opinion, but it picks up speed half way through. I think the title is a bit misleading since it doesn't involve the real minotaur, but a creature that people in the movie believe it is the minotaur. It's entertaining, surely not a top movie but still they managed to make it interesting using the various characters. The effects are OK for a movie with this budget, I never thought it was too fake. Some stuff did bother me, as example, the gas; He can smell the gas when he sticks his head in the hole. In the end he managed to light it, and it suddenly blows through the whole labyrinth, up to the pitholes in the palace. I am no chemist, but it doesn't make much sense why it would do that. The fire would just follow the gasstream, not create a massive stream on its own. If the gas was already streaming so badly, no one would be able to live in the palace.Another thing that make me think, since the minotaur was actually just some strange monstrous bull, how could they been feeding it for centuries, or at least more than a human lifetime? Age affects every living being, even hideous bulls.Other than that, it was entertaining, the casting was well done, the girls pretty, dialogs were OK, and effects pretty good for a lower budget movie.

Minotaur - the word itself explains most of the entire movie.As it happened, my girlfriend bought the DVD-release at a local rental-store (used DVD), and thought it would be a good one. Sure, it has a good looking cover-art, and a nice fancy title/logo, but the rest just lacks content.The introduction and start of the movie makes it feel like at least a partly good one, though during its continuation, it clearly shines through as what it really is: A piece of utter wasted time and money.Do not buy or watch this movie, it's so bad you sit there thinking if you should have done the dishes or mopped the floor instead - as that would really give more excitement than this flop.To sum it up: if one could give a movie a dice-throw instead of the 1-10 rating, I would not even have thrown the dice.Oh, good thing about the DVD-buy on our side: We got a spare DVD-cover for something else - a bit expensive perhaps...