Good concept, poorly executed.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Interesting movie about US soldiers in Iraq coming face to face with a legendary creature.The movie is well made, and has some of the most realistic battle ground scenes. Soldiers all look real, and the story is also intriguing. What spoils this movie is its ending. I'm not sure what made it bad. Was it just the way it ended ? or is it the acting ? In any case, it came across as a dud. Rest of the movie was good. The plot was very original, and the story was seamless. All the scenes looked real too.Not a bad movie, if they changed the ending, and kept the same level of quality as the rest of the movie it would have been much better.

Manticore is not perfect by all means, it does suffer from trying to incorporate too many character back stories(but that's also kind of an improvement as SyFy's characters are often annoying and underdeveloped), the dialogue doesn't flow very naturally, the monster is very poorly-designed(though there have been worse in SyFy movies) and the shaking camera effect in some scenes was distracting and I think unnecessary, then again I may be biased as I don't like and never have liked the use of that technique. However, the story, while not the most original one on the planet is a lot less formulaic and predictable than I have known it to be, there is some tension and suspense with some good gore and the Iraq setting makes it also relevant topically in a way. There is also some good acting from Robert Beltran and Jeff Fahey, the scenery always tries to be authentic, the characters are not as annoying, underdeveloped or stereotypical as any of the SyFy movies since Manticore and the music is less generic and more driven. So overall, not bad, in fact quite tolerable if imperfect. 6/10 Bethany Cox

Recipe on how to make a "Sci-Fi Channel (Un)Original production".1) Get one or two out of work Star Trek actors. There are plenty of them nowadays. 2) Add low grade CGI special effects 3) a half-dozen no-name actors to be monster chow. 4) 3 Gallons of Catsup. (For the fake blood) 5) 1 Crappy illogical script. Mix in movie for 2 hours (including commercial breaks). The movie begins with some clips of Iraqis looting art treasures, and a squad of American soldiers lead by Robert Beltran, playing the kind of new-age castrati he played on Voyager for seven years. A reporter, played by Deep Space Nine's Chase Masterson, (who actually bothered to breath some life into a character) is trapped in a town menaced by the resurrected CGI Manticore. Beltran's squad is sent to rescue her. Now, I often hate most military movies because they get so many things wrong, and this one is no exception. They have a Master Sergeant (E-8) leading a squad. They have a woman with an infantry team. They only send one vehicle on the rescue mission which they've deemed to be "important". The Sergeant is addressed as "Sir" by his squad. They use relaxed tactics in a hostile situation, allowing them to be picked off. Other than that, what you see is a predictable mess, like you've seen in every other Sci-Fi production with a CGI monster.

The first 15 minutes looks like it could have been shot on the outskirts of Baghdad. Having spent 2 years working in Iraq I thought the movie crew did an excellent job with location. The background portraits of Sadaam with the eyes scratched out was a nice touch. Equipment used by the US Army is close to what is actually used except that none of the actors used Level 3 plates. As they add 25Kg to the weight of the body armor I understand why they were left out. The TV reporter should have been wearing black Kevlar Helmut with black body armor used by civilians working in Iraq. For some reason they were not provided with Personal Protection gear.The movie is entertaining, and makes a fine "B" movie. You will be disappointed by the special effects. It would have been better if only parts of the Manticore were shown. A claw here or tail there. With this movie less would have been more.I think it was still worth watching on HBO, Cinemax or Star Movies.