One of my all time favorites.

As Good As It Gets

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

If you ever find yourself in conversation with Tom Hardy at some cocktail party (one can dream), Minotaur is the film you bring up to both flabbergast and embarrass him, if only for your own amusement. It's one of those low budget sword & sorcery schlock-fests that the SyFy channel used to broadcast at two in the morning on sleepy Saturday nights, to serve as background noise for whatever hedonistic shenanigans are going on in the living room. It's Tom's first ever starring role, and therefore should never be forgotten, like those old camcorder tapes of kids learning to ride sans training wheels for the first time. The story borrows from the legend, adding its own lurid, t&a soaked flair that only SyFy can get just right. Tom plays the son of a Viking chieftain (a brief Rutger Hauer), who goes looking for his true love, one among a few of the village's youngsters who get kidnapped every year by a freaky pseudo African tribe of weirdos who sacrifice youths to the mythical Minotaur, residing in rocky catacombs beneath their city's surface. Led by supreme weirdo Deucalion (Candyman's Tony Todd, hamming up every scene), who fervently wants to impregnate his own hot sister (chill, dude), and oversees this theatrical occult ritual with obscene relish. This is one of those creature features where you barely see the beast for the first two thirds of the film, save for a quick snaggle of fur or fang rushing by in the shadows, and suspiciously looking like a bearskin rug cello taped to antlers and a hobby horse. Hardy does get an eventual confrontation with the Minotaur late in the game and deep in the maze, providing a few schlocky moments that are worth the ride, but it's silly stuff most of the time, scraping the bottom of a barrel that does lower than the maze of the bull. Totally tagging Tom in thee blog post though in hopes that he sees this and it brightens his day just a bit.

The legend of the Minotaur originated in antiquity when first related by the great storyteller Homer. Now in modern times several movies have been created and I've seen five. From among them all, this is the very best. The director is Jonathan English, with writers nick green and Stephan McDool. The tale is retold here and it tells of a peoples who lined the Mediterranean and fell under the tyrannical power of King Minos, who was cursed When he offended the Gods and who in return was punished by them. He had asked for a son, but was instead given one who fed on Human flesh. Each year, the king sent his warships throughout the land and forced his vassals to give him tribute in the form of young boys and young girls to be fed to his son the Minotaur. However, Theseus, the half-son of Zues volunteered to be among the victims and offers himself to the group to be sacrificed. Unlike others stories where the King's daughter fell in love with the heroic youth, this version is flagrantly dark and there is much violence, blood and gore to satisfy action oriented audiences. The film is more violent than others, but it's necessary to meet the requirements of advance theater goers. The star of this film is handsome, Tom Hardy who plays Theo or Thesus. Tony Todd is Deucalion the tyrant king who plays it to the hilt. Other cast members include Lex Shrapnel, Jonathan Readwin and Rutger Hauer as Cyrnan. There is a great deal of violence as I said, but it goes hand in hand with fiery, dark caverns, the amazing Minotaur and especially the explosive finally. Take it from me, this version will become a Classic and thus I recommend it enthusiastically to one and all. ****

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

Ah, Minotaur... saw this movie in my TV-guide on a lazy Saturday night. The review that came with it wasn't that good, but I had nothing better to do. So I just gave it a go.Surprisingly, the story kept me entertained for the whole 90 minutes. Tony Todd was a real treat and you could see the actors were really trying to make something out of it. Sure, it's a B-movie and sure, it's going straight to DVD. But if you just watch it without too many expectations and without caring too much about plot holes, you'll have an entertaining night.Special effects weren't that good, but the ancient atmosphere and camera work made up for that. Unfortunately, the Minotaur himself was too robotic for my taste. That took a little bit of the magic away.Conclusion: Minotaur is a very approachable myth/monster movie that you can just pick up in the video store, or watch whenever it comes on TV. It's a fun way to spend a lazy Saturday night :).