Review: Fans should be hungry, like the ‘Wolf’

Geoff Carter

Friday, Jan. 25, 2002 | 8:43 a.m.

Every few years, a foreign film grabs the attention of the fickle 18-24 demographic and holds it well into the "aftermarket" -- that golden land where people spend lots and lots of money on videos and DVDs, often quadrupling a film's theatrical gross."Trainspotting," "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" and "City of Lost Children" are but three of these -- popular then, almost legendary now.

"Brotherhood of the Wolf" is sure to join that august group. American kids may think they've explored every nook and cranny of Evil-in-the-Woodsville, but alas: French director Christophe Gans has opened a whole new avenue with this, a real blood-and-guts monster show with enough martial arts and kinky sex to sate the demographic's voracious hunger for these kinds of films -- from here to eternity or the "Matrix" sequel, whichever comes first.

And, oh yes, the whole film is in French and takes place in 1764. Put kung fu in period European dress and have your victims screaming in French, and everything old is new again.

Loosely based on a true historical event, "Brotherhood of the Wolf" tells the story of the Beast of Gevaudan, a sharp-toothed nasty that killed more than 100 people, mostly women and children (it ignores men and firearms). Dispatched by the king to find the Beast and quell the entrenched superstitions of the village is Gregoire de Fronsac (Samuel Le Bihan), a naturalist, and his blood brother, an Iroquois named Mani (Mark Decascos).

We quickly see what Mani is capable of doing. He pounds a bunch of jerks during a heavy rainstorm; Decascos is one of the world's foremost martial artists, and under the direction of fight choreographer Philip Kwok he's as lethal and precise as a guillotine.

Later, when Fronsac fights, it's made plain he's studied the martial arts, too. Don't think too hard about where these guys would have learned this Asian fighting style in the Americas and France respectively, or how every country bumpkin seems to know how to fight in the same style -- it's not the kind of movie meant to be questioned.

Rather, it's a hyper-violent, sexy piece of eye candy, with a mysterious beast (even after the creature is revealed late in the film, you're not sure what to make of it), a bunch of pretty girls armed to their perfect teeth and two bad motor scooters in three-point hats, whomping the rest of the characters into mush. There's some political and religious intrigue -- the narrator relates his story on the eve of the French Revolution -- but none of it really matters.

In fact, most of the dialogue and exposition is pure window dressing, a chance for the audience to catch its breath between fights, sex scenes and maulings.

And I'm not saying that as if it's a bad thing.

Whether the kids will be able to sit through a two-hour plus subtitled film is "Brotherhood's" only sticking point. But then again, its native language may play in its favor: I've already seen a fan review likening this brutal picture to the elegant films of Merchant-Ivory. It's only a matter of time before Kristin Scott Thomas is trained to fight vampires. You know, for the kids.