Cyclops

Cyclops (2008)

This thrilling Sci-fi adventure is set in the days of the Roman Empire. The evil and corrupt emperor Tiberius responds to the threat of a Cyclops by sending one of his bravest soldiers, Marcus, to capture the beast. When Marcus returns with the creature in chains he becomes very popular with the people. This threatens the emperor and his scheming cousin, so they manipulate the situation and force Marcus to fight in the Gladiatorial games. Of course pitting him against the powerful Cyclops in the end, thinking the Cyclops will rid them of an annoying threat to their power. Only what they don’t know is that Marcus has made friends with the Cyclops, despite the creatures unfortunate habit of eating anyone that gets too close to him! With the help of his new ally Marcus turns the tables on the Emperor in an attempt to free Rome.

Okay this is one of those as seen on the Sci-fi Channel movies that you can catch most every Saturday night. As is the case with most of these movies they get one named star, in this case Eric Roberts, to headline the thing and fill it with whoever happens to be available in Bulgaria at the time of shooting. Now if you watch the movie with this in the back of your mind and aren’t too critical you can have some fun here. The story is at times decent fun and at other times slow and boring. The things that worked for me are when the Cyclops is on screen causing havoc ripping off all sorts of CGI limbs and merrily chomping down on the locals. But the movie spends way too much time on the weak story centering on the political intrigue, which I found boring as hell. So basically when the movie just tries to be a good old fashioned creature feature it works, all else is a waste of time. I can sum up the acting best by saying the most interesting member of the cast is the CGI Cyclops with his two lines, “Meat” and “Free”. Really I’m not sure if Eric Roberts was just collecting a paycheck, but the man clearly has no pride in his craft anymore. But then he did fly to Bulgaria to star in a movie titled Cyclops.

The special effects consist of lots of CGI, creature, limbs and blood. Occasionally we are treated to a rubber hand, but again this is a virtual monster the whole way. I can’t lie the creature looks just awful. But I’m not sure if it is because of how goofy it looks or that they aren’t trying to make it look realistic at all because I had fun with it. The creature worked for me in all of it’s silly CGI glory, and I’m not a fan of digital effects at all. The rest of the movie is okay, but clearly shot on a really tight budget. The Coliseum of this movie looks to seat a couple hundred people and the emperor is never guarded by more than 5 or 6 soldiers. Oh and someone needs to do their research or at least check Wikipedia because to decimate a legion means to kill every 10th man, not every other solider!

Okay so in the end this isn’t a great movie. But then it never really was intended to be. I do think it is good for a few laughs on a Saturday night sitting around with you friends drinking some beers. That isn’t such a bad thing, is it? This movie will be available on February 24th from the fine folks over at Anchor Bay. For more information check them out at http://www.anchorbayentertainment.com/

2 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer