Minotaur

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Minotaur

Postby Quintus Aurelius Orcus on Sun Mar 04, 2007 2:43 pm

Salve

I recently got a hod of a copy of the movie Minotaur. So this review will be about that.
Review: Minotaur
Release year: 2007
Starring: Tony Todd, Tom Hardy and Rutger Hauer
Directed by Jonathan English
Anyone who has read a book on Greek mythology will know the story of Theseus and the minotaur. The story is straightfoward in that Theseus goes along with 7 young men and women, who are taken ever 7 or 8 years as retribution for the death of a Cretan prince. Once in Knossos, he meets Ariadne and as it goes in these stories, she helps him by guiding him trough the labyrinth. Theseus slays the minotaur and escapes Crete with Ariadne, but ditches her on a island, where she is found later by Dionysos who makes her his bride. Once home in Athens, Theseus forgets the put down the black sails, so his father - thinking that his son is dead, kills himself by throwing himself into the sea which will be named after him later on.
If you look at the story, one can easy imagine that this would make a great movie. But no, they had to change the story to make it more or less historical accurate. The result is awefull. Like Troy, a decent b-action movie but that is about it. I couldn't believe what they did to the story.
In the movie, the Cretans are a ruthless, decadent people whoe empire stretches far. Appearently as far as the north. In the introductory scene we learn that the Cretans weren't interested in worshipping statues or wooden deities, but wanted a living god. So they forced the queen to mate with their chief deity and from that union came forth the minotaur. The minotaur wasn't born, but cut out from the womb by the priests which resulted in the death of the queen. Flash forward to where the story takes place. A young man named Theo (short of Theseus I think. Why on Earth they would change the name, I don't get.) is heartbroken over the fact that his girlfriend was taken as sacrifice to the minotaur. Appearently he can't get over her and somehow still wants to believe she is alie. Than he meets a leper who tells him that his girlfriend is still alive and when the Cretan soldiers come to claim the 8 sacrifices, he takes the place of one of the young men and gets to go to Crete.
From there on, we are introduced to cliched characters like the ego-maniacal king who wants to have children with his own sister which is probably the result of inhaling to much natural gas, which he seems to do alot throughout the movie. The princes, the sister of the king, acts in the same way as Ariadne, but she isn't convincing here. Tony Todd and Rutger Hauer aren't in their A game, as they don't really belong there. Such great actions should be elsewhere.
Above all, when the 8 victims are thrown in the pitt where the minotaur lives, all that Theo does and most of them do, are yelling at eachother and calling out Theo's girlfriend. It strikes me of being dangerously naieve that when you are in the lair of the minotaur, you start to call out a person in the hope of finding her, but not realising that by doing that, you draw the attention of the monster, which kind of reminds me of a zombie bull. The biggest problem that this movie has is the fact that you don't really know who to root for. You want to root for the minotaur and hoping that he kill these idiots. Just when I thought that they hit rock bottom with Amazons and Gladiators, they produce this movie, which is said to come from the producers from The Mummy and LOTR. What were they thinking? Better yet, what in Tartarus where they smoking when they came up with this crap? What is it with Hollywood these days, that they have to reinvent old franchices or stories? Ok, for some it does work, but not for all. My advice, rent the movie first. Don't buy it, it is waste of money if you ask me.
I would rate it 3 out of 10. It has some redeeming qualities, but in the 2nd half of the movie, even these qualities just isn't enough to save the movie.
valete

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