Minotaur

A previous reviewer drew an analogy between MINOTAUR and ROMEO AND JULIET. Well, not really. There's no feud between Alex's people and Thea's, Thea freely takes up with other men, and the personal attraction isn't mutual. The more direct analogy is with THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. In fact, there's a masquerade ball scene that pretty much shoves the PHANTOM parallel in our faces (was it intentional?). Did Alex's invisible psychological control of of beautiful, artistic Thea strike the film-makers as PHANTOMish? The differences, aside from the contemporary setting, are that Alex's deformity is moral rather than physical (this phantom is a homicidal Mossad "spook"), there are two sequential Raoul de Chagnys, and Thea, unlike Christine, is a modern screen character who segues seamlessly from first kiss with a new beau to hot bedroom scene. The movie itself is fairly gripping; I don't rate it highly because the final scene, where the Mossad agent simply dumps all his training, wasn't believable and looks like a perfunctory wrap.