Historical, sci-fi, martial arts tale and more. Hard to pigeonhole this French-made movie into a genre, which is a good thing. I saw the fight scenes as a bit overdone. And, perhaps the fact that half the community was in on the conspiracy is a bit unrealistic. But, oh well, it's a movie. Suspend disbelief and enjoy...

Brotherhood Of The Wolf is the kind of film that has juuust a bit too much packed into its two plus hour running time to be an instant classic, but at the same time I can't help but say to me it's a personal favourite. It's tailored towards my love of grisly adventure, comic book style frames and wilderness set action mayhem. It's based on the allegedly real 'beast of gevaudan', a massive carnivorous monster that terrorized rural France during the 1700's. That historical event is built upon to create a mythic, larger than life cinematic whirlwind that resembles The Ghost & The Darkness, mixed with The Last Of The Mohicans with a touch of occult intrigue. Samuel Le Bohan plays a womanizing french debonair who takes it upon himself to hunt the creature, and the impressively athletic action star Marc Dacoscas plays his native companion Mani. Together they scour the misty french wildlands and shady, vaguely corrupt small town aristocracy, searching for clues as to the creatures origin. It's a curious film, one that transcends the genres a bit too much, but at the same time in a fun way that finds you never correctly guessing where the film might take you. It's part Sleepy Hollow, part B Movie and part decadent soft core porno in the vein of caligula, and is certainly never boring. It's great strength is in set design, and especially cinematography. There are a whole bunch of shots that are so lush, so gorgeous that they seem almost like an exquisite oil painting. The creature is kept wisely out of sight for most of the film but it's eventual appearance is shocking, and shows how much work went into the effects. It's almost a perfect film, with a bit of editing out the unnecessary bits (that DTV lookin melodramatic orgys gotta go, man), it could be truly something special. But nevertheless it's still a rip roaring, atmospheric action horror silver bullet of a film that deserves praise for its undeniable imagination and creativity.

Now this is a bizarre film. A startling mix of action, historical drama, thriller, horror, fantasy and (most importantly) erotica. It is a film that is hard to categorise and indeed lurches quickly from one to the other, often within the same scene.Watching this, I suspect my reason for enjoying it so much is that it is charming and inventive. It is a flawed film (something I will elaborate on later) but it is so shameless in its style and story that I can't help but be swept up in it.The story itself starts out very simply, a Beast (la bete!) is terrorising a region of France so the King sends a taxidermist and knight to the region to capture the beast and bring it back to Paris for examination. The knight, Gregoire de Fronsac brings with him an Indian, Mani. The film soon plunges forward with other tales of incest, political intrigue, assassination and religion at an alarming rate, so fast in fact that some of the more subtle parts of the film don't get the time and the resolution that they deserve.Some of the actors are extremely familiar, including Vincent Cassell (one of my favourites) as the slimy and creepy Jean-Francois de Morangias, who lost an arm in Africa to a lion. Samuel Le Bihan (Fronsac) and Monica Belluci (Sylvia) are reasonably good but despite the genre blending nature of the film, the characters (among others) are irritatingly under-developed. Whilst each has a reasonable back story, motive and so on, there is little characterisation beyond that.The director, Christophe Gans appears to be a huge fan of slow motion, the effect coming in often at bizarre and borderline intrusive times. Whilst the action is very entertaining, the fighting scenes in some cases are obviously shoe-horned into the scene with little or no relevance to what is currently going on. The film also goes on for a long time and could easily shave off several scenes overall and not lose pacing or characterisation. All in all, an odd film. I find it really quite entertaining and inventive, enough that I can overlook the flaws that can be levelled at it.

I first watched "Brotherhood of the Wolf" several years ago (it came out in 2001, after all)... back then, dramas with good action scenes were a dime a dozen. However, nowadays, action movies seem to lack directors who know what they are doing... which makes these older movies seem all the more better.The story of "Brotherhood of the Wolf" is very compelling, being set in a French province in 1764 and the few years after-wards. I won't say any more of the story, since I don't want to spoil it at all (this should be my first non-spoilers review).This is mostly a drama, but the action scenes serve both to advance the plot, and to give depth to the characters... from the first one, within the first few minutes, which introduces some of the main characters.What makes this one of my faves, however, is all of the parts combine to produce both an entertaining experience, and a work of art. The pace, narration (which is sparse), characters, actors, directing, post-production editing, and soundtrack all combine so seamlessly that you hardly notice the time passing by.Well, anyhow, go watch it... 10/10, perfect score by me. In fact, I think I'll go watch it one more time.