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Overall Rating : 5.5/10
Directed By : John Terlesky
Greg Evigan
Garret Sato
Emmanuelle Vaugier (SAW II)
Sebastian Spence
Supplied By : Lionsgate Films
Film Reviewed By : Rick L. Blalock
Date Reviewed : Feb.10, 2006
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| PLOT A brand of mercenaries steals Attila the Hun’s fabled sword and inadvertently awakens the most feared creature in all of mythology – Cerberus, the monstrous three-headed dog with a thirst for blood. |
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| THE REVIEW Samantha Gaines is a young curator at a museum in New York. She is eagerly awaiting an important piece of mythological history to arrive at her museum, the breastplate worn by Attila The Gun thousands of years ago. It is not until moments before the breastplate was to board the plane headed for America, that Samantha get news of the artifact being stolen from the museum that originally housed it in Romania. Samantha also learns that the head curator at that museum has been killed, a man in which she studied under for year. With the death of the said curator, Samantha finds herself the heir of his position, which also makes her a target for the mercenaries that stole the plate. The breastplate dons numerous ancient etchings, that when translated are directions on how to find the sword that Attila owned, called the "Sword of Mars", any person to ever posses this sword would become invincible. Samantha seems to be the only one left who can translate the etchings, so the gangs leader, Cutter and his boys kidnap her brother Zach and take him back to Romania. Samantha goes to Romania in search for her where she meets a team of three explorers lead by Jake, and they ultimately end up finding the tomb in which Attila was buried with sword. But the mercenaries also end up finding them and it leads into a stand off. When the sword was removed from the tomb, it unknowingly unleashes a one thousand year old three headed dog with the tail of a serpent named Cerberus. Before long in the film Cerberus is out in the Romanian streets reeking havoc and viciously slaughtering the innocent, and it is up to Samantha and whoever is tough enough to survive to end it...and we find out the only way to do so is with the sword. Well, when I first saw the cover art for this I thought it would be some kind of midlevel movie and I would hate it. But it turns out that it is fairly modern, it just happens to deal with mythology. I really did end up enjoying this for the most part and you really don't have to be a big history buff to fully understand it as well. CERBERUS, is another story about greed, it is truly nothing new as today's real world seems to be filled with it already anyway. This one is about an ancient sword and when into the wrong hands it could make the wrong person have powers he shouldn't. In this case, our tough guy, Cutter has the sword and he is on a huge power trip even killing his comrades in the process. The power given to him by the sword seems to be over-powering him, that's until our dog takes a "bite out of crime" and his ass! Speaking of Cerberus the three headed dog, sure it's not believable and sure it's CGI but he still looks pretty damn cool to me. Probably one of the few downfalls in CERBERUS is that when you do see the dog the lighting is too dark making him less visible than desired. It's because of this that I can't necessarily judge the quality of the cgi work.... maybe that was the director's purpose? Now that we've talked about the creature of the film. let's talk about overall believability shall we? I find it can't of goofy that a couple of grown mean( and a hot woman) would fight over some stupid little sword and breastplate worn by some old thousands of years old geezer, but they do. Whatever the case, believable or not, to me the plot still results in an entertaining movie. The acting is pretty good here, especially when you are acting against an object in which the actor/actresses can't see, I thought they did some decent improvising. Greg Evigan, I thought also did a decent job as Marcus Cutter, a man who it is revealed to have a bitterness toward Jake for getting him dismissed from the military years prior, he is also the man who goes a little too crazy with his newfound power. Sebastian Spence plays Jake Addams, a character I don't fully understand to be honest. The guy seems to know little or nothing at all about mythology...so why is he after the sword? and lastly out of the memorable performances, but oh so no least is the lovely Emmanuelle Vaugier as Samantha Gaines. She seems to have studied for this role as she suddenly become my teacher, because I don't any of this stuff! My favorite performance here would have to be by Vaugier, she has starred in a lot of TV and has recently been in SAW II.... it looks like she is progressing rather quickly. |
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| GORE
METER 5/10 The gore is probably my favorite thing about CERBERUS, although most is not seen on screen just implied. But we do get to see the dog rips a few bodies to shreds and it's great! |
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| MUSICAL
SCORE 3.5/10 Again a score that is just ok. It is not really beneficial to the film.... just a little orchestra thrown in. |
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| OVERALL
IMPRESSION OF THE FILM It just so happens that I kind of did like this, the creature is really cool in my opinion, but the only downfall like I said previously is the lighting. If you like films with plots that really don't make sense but yet manage to still keep it together by utilizing a vicious three headed blood thirsty dog, this is for you! |
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