The Film Journal...Passionate and informed film criticism from an auteurist perspective.

Brotherhood of the Wolf

By Rick Curnutte

Richard A. Curnutte, Jr. is the Editor of The Film Journal. He has studied English and Film at Ohio University and The Ohio State University.

This bizarre, exhilarating French import is the most unique epic to be produced since Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Like that landmark film, Brotherhood takes genre standards and transcends them with sharp and entertaining precision. It is, I believe, the world's first action-romance-historical-martial arts-werewolf-epic. Yes, Brotherhood is a lurid amalgam of no less than a half dozen genres. What's amazing is that it somehow manages to nail each of them.

Set in 1765 during the reign of Louis XV, a brutal, wolf-like monster is terrorizing a rural community in France, savagely mutilating countless women and children. The best remains undetectable and uncaptured for years, possessing extreme strength and cunning intelligence. The King of France sends in two man to try and bring the creature down, Grégoire de Fronsac (Samuel Le Bihan), a French naturalist, and Mani (Mark Dacascos), his Iroquois blood brother. Experts in hunting, tracking, nature and New French-style kickboxing, Grégoire and Mani are France's best hopes of finding and destroying the beast.

What follows is one of the most eclectic, electrifying film experiences of the year, surely setting a new standard in contemporary action films, even if it is stilted at times. Brotherhood is, aside from being action-packed, thoughtful and poetic, with its contemplative ideals of kinship with nature, devotion to fellow man and the undying bond of blood.

Dacascos' enigmatic Mani is one of the most awesome screen personas I've seen in a while. Possessed with near-inhuman strength, as well as a respect and love for his totem-spirt, the wolf, Mani is the ideal warrior: kind and fair, though unrelenting. He's a beautiful badass.

Director Christophe Gans (The Crying Freeman) has crafted the year's first unequivocal genre success, a sly and impressive epic that stuns with its bravado, even while it moves with its passionate heart.