Brotherhood of the Wolf (Le Pacte des Loups) film review

Movie Review

France. 1764. The hills are alive with the sound of GRRR!!! ARGH!!! THWACK!!! The mythical Beast of Gevaudan is on the loose, killing women and children but running away from men, and the King has ordered his army to catch and kill it. However, witnesses claim it is a demon rather than one of the wolves of the region - it appears and disappears at will, and has claws of iron. In the absence of Sherlock Holmes, it is fortunate that the young naturalist Gregoire (Samuel Le Bihan), back from fighting in America, with his Native American "brother" Mani (Mark Dacascos) are on hand to solve the mystery.

Fortunately for all of those who have read The Hound Of The Baskervilles, things are - much like the Beast itself - never as simple as they appear. Every mercenary in France appears to be on the scene, together with the interested nobility of the region, making for a large and eclectic cast as our heroes join up with the forces of an ageing army captain, the bitter and maimed Jean-Francois (Vincent Cassel) and an eager young Marquis who is destined to relate this tale during another period of Terror - that of the Revolution. In addition, Mani quickly makes enemies of a feral hunting tribe and Gregoire finds his affections torn between the virginal sister of Jean-Francois and a tarot-reading Italian prostitute. With the ongoing debates surrounding the Enlightenment, religion, reason and 18th century race relations, it's amazing that any hunting gets done at all.

Writer Director Christophe Gans obviously has high hopes for this film, treading the relatively unworn path of the intellectual action movie, and most of it doesn't disappoint. From the first few minutes which turn an "oh no it's the Sound Of Music" moment into a horrific rollercoaster ride to a cliff face and its bloody conclusion, it is clear that nothing in this film will be entirely expected. However, it also appears that Gans and co-writer Stephane Cabel sat down with all their favourite movies and created a screenplay more resembling a collage than an entirely original work. At a first count, elements from films as diverse as Sleepy Hollow, Quills, The Crow, Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom, The Last Of The Mohicans, Enter The Dragon, the Western and Film Noir genres in their entireties and, inevitably, Gans' Manga adaptation Crying Freeman crop up. Fortunately all of these films were good in the first place, and Brotherhood Of The Wolf has enough originality about it to make it worth seeing even if all of the above films are regularly in your VCR.

Brotherhood Of The Wolf is beautifully shot and its feeling of authenticity from the castles of noblemen to the shacks of peasants justifies its, for a French film, large budget. Christophe Gans does, however, occasionally get carried away with Matrix-like shots which do no more than interrupt action scenes that were flowing along quite well without them, thank you very much. Mark Dacascos, who has proved his martial arts qualifications in Crying Freeman, is very much a pretender to the legacy of Bruce Lee, knocking back all opponents in an effortless and brilliantly choreographed style.

Unfortunately, when Mark Dacascos is not showing us 101 things to do with a very big stick he has very little to do or say, perhaps a result of difficulties with the French language, because otherwise the camera adores him. Apart from visuals, an immediately effective element of the movie is its bone-crunching, nerve-jangling use of sound - guaranteed to cause migraines in five minutes flat.

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The film's nominal star is Samuel Le Bihan, who seems comfortable enough in his role as a witty libertine naturalist-come-soldier, but fails to convince in his Zorro-like transformation into a dark avenger. Beating him in the blandness stakes is Emilie Dequenne as Marianne, who spends the movie being rescued and generally would not be out of place in a Jane Austen novel. Fortunately both screen presence and an interesting character come personified in French star Vincent Cassel, last seen wearing a dress in Elizabeth, and here portraying an enigmatic one-armed gunman with his own agenda.

Inside Brotherhood Of The Wolf there is undoubtedly a fine film struggling to get out, and it is on the whole a more confusing movie than a boring one. Its ambitions are to be admired rather than ridiculed, and they have resulted in a film which goes some way to dismiss the cliché of European arthouse films. While putting Vincent Cassel and Mark Dacascos in a room and asking them to contemplate the works of Rousseau might be an interesting exercise, Brotherhood of the Wolf never threatens to go that far, picking entertainment over intellectualism every time. If Christophe Gans had discarded a few of the more irrelevant plot strands - and about 45 minutes of film - this could be a serious contender at the international box office. As it stands, however, Brotherhood Of The Wolf is the cinematic equivalent of a concussion - it keeps hitting you over the head until you can't remember a thing about it.

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