The Hunt for the Hidden Relic (2002)

Sadly Over-hyped

As Good As It Gets

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

if you love the book, the movie is good to see to make a comparison. People who do not know the original novel, most likely, will not enjoy the movie. It's flat, died-and-ran-away, and "what is it all about?". I agree you can't make a good 2,5h motion picture out of excellent! >600 pages twist and turn (and "make me think") story. Watch it on your own risk, but don't come back and complain until you read the original. ...well done from technical side..., no complains about actors'es play, pity the director focused only on "run for your life" scenes, but as it seems a quite low budget movie (so don't expect any FX to remember), sounds as a nice event for an evening (if you red a book before - otherwise go and see "Mummy ..." series"). Veni, Vidi, flushed....I loved to see it as the book is in my Top 10 "Sci-Fi" list.... go and spend a week to find what is it all about.

I saw this in the video store titled "Ancient Relic" and was intrigued, knowing nothing about it. When I started watching it, I was impressed with the production values, the music, the look of the cast and then they opened their mouths: DUBBED! I quickly stopped the DVD, went to the menu expecting to switch to German dialogue with English subtitles, only to find no such option existed. The only way to watch it was dubbed. Doh! And watch it I did. It was a fun a little story that really needed to be cut down to 2 hours, but otherwise a joy to look at. The music was enthralling and the story interesting. But the producer or the distributor and definitely most of the dubbing actors (if you can call them actors) needed to be shot for the dreadful blow they dealt to this film (oh and let's not forget the voice casting director!). The lackluster voice performances destroyed any compelling drama the original production might have had. There is no way to adequately judge a movie that has been dubbed, beyond the story and production values. It further disturbs me that our country has gotten so lazy that we would rather listen to a badly dubbed movie than feel the drama of the original performance and read the subtitles, so much so some production or distribution executive decided not to spend the money on offering a subtitled original language version. I sat riveted to "Das Boot" in the original German, even as I read the English translation. Not that this is anything as brilliant as Das Boot, but come on, the weaker the content the more you need to give it every edge possible. Frankly I think this was a fine film, definitely entertaining and definitely worth watching -- otherwise I would have turned it off within the first 15 minutes of the horrible dubbing job. It is most unfortunate that someone in power was so bone-headed as to actually think this version would be acceptable to anyone, much less represent the film the way the director intended. I might have given the film an 8 if not for the poor dubbing. But I enjoyed watching it enough to recommend to others despite the bad English dub.

This is the best thing I have watched on TV all year - and in fact for ages.Although I don't know very much German (wonders of subtitles), this mini-series was brilliantly acted, in particular by the main star Matthias Koeberlin who delivers a convincing role who you can feel a connection to.It was fast paced and didn't get too technical with the details. It contain a great plot of Steffen who while on a archaeological dig falls into an underground tomb where he finds a skeleton. Upon closer inspection this old skeleton has has modern surgery and a manual on a Sony video camera.The plot thickens as word gets out about the skeleton and Steffen finds himself being hunted for the video which the camera contains - of Jesus Christ.The questions soon becomes - where is the camera? and who will get to it first? and live to tell the tale...While there are a couple of factual errors, don't let that put you off. It is truly enjoyable to watched with excellent camera work, script, and shows some beautiful countryside.I can only hope that I get to see more mini-series of this quality.

Having read some comments explaining how the film did not do justice to the book, I bought and read the book. It was a tough task because this is one of the most poorly written books I have read in a long time (not the translator's fault - I read it in German).As for the ideas, the cliches abound and nothing is believable.So even though the film is full of unbelievable moments, and of cliches, believe it or not but it is a marked improvement on the book!Make sure you don't buy the book, or waste time reading it.Yes it was a best-seller in Germany but I guess this only proves that today's masses are ignorant and unsophisticated enough, that they can be made to love such a thing... ;-)