Alicia I love this movie so much

Konterr Brilliant and touching

Teringer An Exercise In Nonsense

Hayden Kane There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

ebiros2 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.

James Miller After ten o'clock, I like nothing better than making a cup of tea and watching a horror / horror thriller – I save The Straight Story etc. for the afternoon or early evening. This film filled the spot well, and despite obviously not having the budget of Independence Day (most evident in the look of the town streets, and the CGI of the Manticore running and jumping), the film looked good, and the Manticore in close-up was detailed, and would scare me if it walked round the sofa. The acting was good, although the reporter jumped a little too quickly from scared out of her wits in a little room, to chasing off after the beast to follow the story (a film cliché, as somebody has mentioned), and her facing a soldier's gun and agreeing to sit down was the low point of the acting and script.I have to say, I have enough trouble making out anything on those little screens on video cameras, so the final effort at destruction relied heavily on the Manticore both looking at the tiny screen and not Chakotay's finely chiselled head, and having superb eyesight to "recognize" its twin. Would the Manticore turn to stone if it drank from a lake (if it drinks), and is this why, like vampires, there were no mirrors in its lair? In the how good it is / budget ratio, this film is ten times better than, say, Godzilla.

jjib I thought the plot had potential, but the special effects were very poorly done. It would have been better if we had never seen the "manticore" -- just shadows or a claw here and there. And I won't even comment on the helicopter crash.The acting, though, was a pleasant surprise. Robert Beltran and Jeff Fahey (whose performance in "Silverado" is one of my all-time favorites) turned in good, solid performances. The real surprises came from A.J. Buckley, Faran Tahir and even some of the more minor roles, like Jeff M. Lewis and Richard Gnolfo. I'm looking forward to seeing them again.

Jack This is about a group of American GIs in Iraq. We start with a scene of them interrogating some people who were caught looting a museum. They decide that these people were just really hungry, and it's completely understandable that they would loot someplace in order to be able to buy food. The soldiers release the suspects and give them all their MRE's, establishing them as really nice guys and gals. Some idiot reporter from CNN is hanging around bothering them as well. She pompously informs them that she's embedded with a Marine unit, so she's got the right to go anywhere. They inform her that they're with the Army, so she should go away. It's kind of funny. The reporter is cute and kind of sexy, but she never establishes herself as anything more than the standard issue "anything for a story" cliché. Next, the townspeople arm themselves and we get our first big shootout. It's actually pretty good, not exactly Blackhawk Down, but at least they tried. One thing that is rather amusing is watching these American soldiers ride around in a Russian BTR-70 armored personnel carrier. Don't tell me, let me guess: This was filmed in Romania? Next we get the obligatory scene of the soldiers having some time off between missions, playing football. The guys have their shirts off and most of them just happen to have chiseled abs. The girl wears a sweaty tight T-shirt, which she fills out very well, if I do say so myself. The commander (that Chakotay guy from Star Trek Voyager, here playing that Chakotay guy from Voyager except in an Army uniform) gets suitably dressed down for letting all the suspects go. Then the "I'm sick of doing puff pieces" reporter gets herself in some trouble in a remote town, and the GI's are sent to rescue her. Little does anyone know (well, we know) that some bad guys have looted a very special artifact from the museum, one which allows them to bring the Manticore to life! Yes, the Manticore will kill the infidels, yadda yadda yadda.There's a small shootout, then the soldiers get to the town and find everyone dead. Except of course for the reporter and about 4 other guys who were apparently the only ones with enough brains to hide inside a room to escape the Manticore. Then we get a whole bunch of shootouts, one of which involves a really fake CGI helicopter doing all the things that fake CGI stuff does so well, like bursting into flames in totally fake ways. The Manticore itself looks fairly good, at least in close up shots; it's CGI, but they did a good amount of detail on it, and it does look pretty icky. The ending really defies any sort of logic, but what the hey.Overall, not a bad movie for the Sci-Fi Channel. You've got some hot babes, some very average B-movie acting, and thousands of rounds fired. Nothing particularly exciting, but if you've got a couple of hours to kill and you're a fan of low budget movies, you could do worse.