SeeQuant
Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction
Roy Hart
If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.
Billy Ollie
Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable
martindale-42141
Took an absolutely amazing, well written thriller novel, and turned it into a gory monster movie. The best characters were left out, key plot points were abandoned, and characters died when they couldn't have due to the following books. Even if I hadn't read the book I still would've hated this more than the horrid adaption of Timeline by Michael Crichton.
Leofwine_draca
THE RELIC has to be one of the most disappointing monster movies ever made. I remember buying this on VHS when it first came out back in 1998 and feeling completely disappointed by it. The problem isn't the story, which is run-of-the-mill monster nonsense. It's a combination of the execution and the script, which combine to equal one of the most lacklustre monster flicks of all time. The movie takes an age to get going. Before anything in the region of 'interesting' happens, we're introduced to a bunch of particularly bland or detestable characters. When a slumming-it Tom Sizemore, playing a tired-looking cop, is the best character in the film, you know you're in trouble.Penelope Ann Miller is one of those actresses who just seemed to disappear from our screens around this time. It's easy to see why; she's neither photogenic nor a talented actress, and when you combine this with her interfering, irritating character it makes for a bad combination. Her 'frightened face' is one of the funniest things I've ever seen. Look out for a couple of clichés at her workplace: the crotchety, gnarled old boss (Linda Hunt), the wheelchair bound genius (old timer James Whitmore, who deserves better), and the sinister, treacherous Asian (Lo Chi Muoi).Attempts are made to make things interesting by throwing in some gruesome crime scene shots of a severed head, but these do nothing to increase the entertainment value. Instead the movie plods on, cliché follows cliché, and finally we get a look at the beast: not Stan Winston's best work, it has to be said, the monster here looks like a primal rip-off of PREDATOR and is animated via some poor CGI (the laughable tongue scene is a real low point of the movie). In the last reel the film actually picks up, although by then it's too little, too late. We get a few cool scenes of the monster munching on party guests and taking apart a few SWAT guys (they even throw in the old 'severed guy' gag) before a ludicrous climax in which Miller manages to outrun a fireball that, in reality, would explode in about three milliseconds (but gets stretched out to a full 30 seconds here). Peter Hyams is one of my least favourite directors but even by his low standards he's slacking on this one. It's a crashing bore of a monster flick.
A_Different_Drummer
... and I am talking about the IMDb universe, because I am not currently registered to do entertainment reviews on the other inhabited planets. Still, just a guess, I think this horrendous adaption of a Preston/Child novel would likely qualify as awful in those realms as well. In fact, I suspect that this single film was responsible for the fact that very little of Preston/Child's later works -- many of which were just brilliant -- ever caught another bid from Hollywood.So what can we say about Peter Hyam's bizarre attempt to turn a wonderfully mature, adult, mystery novel into Jaws 36? * IMDb rating is dead on. Thank you, IMDb reviewers * an all-star cast is completely lost when competing with the CGI creature. Only Penelope Ann Miller shines. (This reviewer has always considered her an under-appreciated actress -- this was done just after she stole the show in Witch Hunt, one of the most obscure but entertaining movies ever. Tab to Amazon and order that!) * the movie is so off-kilter that, by the climax, the audience is as likely to be rooting for the creature (single-minded, focused, acrobatic, athletic, all good and admirable qualities) as his prey.Whatta waste.
gavin6942
A homicide detective (Tom Sizemore) and an anthropologist (Penelope Ann Miller) try to destroy a South American lizard-like god, who is on a people eating rampage in a Chicago museum.I love this film because it is humorous and there is some bizarre obsession with various kinds of coffee (mocha, espresso and latte all get mentioned at different times). And that is before it turns into a monster movie.Ebert said it "combines the conventions of the horror and disaster genres" and "is actually a lot of fun, if you like special effects and gore." Siskel called it "surprisingly entertaining", and even Leonard Maltin had to say the monster "is especially impressive." Yet, the film allegedly cost 60 million and only made 33 million at the box office, making it a flop. Perhaps if the lead had been Harrison Ford rather than Tom Sizemore, this would have drawn in the extra people (and possibly have given the film a stronger actor, with all due respect to Sizemore). I tend to side with the critics on this one -- I thought it was a lot of fun if nothing else.
