Brotherhood of the Wolf
After all the hype I heard about this movie, I was expecting some sort of phenomenal ass kicking horror movie with lots of violence and gore. The supposed plot to the movie that I had read was: In the 18th century, the King of France has two guys to track down a beast/werewolf/nasty thing in the forest, that has massacred several of the local villagers. The main character is a "libertine" and his sidekick is an Indian...er, a Native American...ahem. I saw the trailer for it, and that got my blood pumping. The buzz is that this French film would open up in NY and LA, and proceed to kick everyone's ass. It finally went wide release, actually..."wider release" (I'd hardly call TWO theaters in Kansas City, "Wide Release".
Be sure to bring your reading glasses, as it's a subtitled French film. I was hoping for some serious full-on death scenes, and got a taste of that just a few minutes in with some village girl racing across an open field, only to be dragged, mauled and whatever else happened. YES!!! So far, so good. There was also a nice scene with bad guys dragging around a woman, only to meet up with the good guys sitting on their horses in the pouring rain. Bad guys get stupid, and good guys wait patiently. Bad guys get even more stupid, and blondie jumps off his horse and proceeds to kick ass. Again, so far so good. Tons of slow motion effects, and even tons more of costumes and candles, to make it an artsy foreign film. This looks like something right out of a Merchant Ivory film.
I can deal with with "dark and moody" movies involving mysterious villains. Sleepy Hollow and From Hell come to mind, but this piece of French shit turns out to really be a chick flick. I went to go see the movie because I thought there was going to be action and adventure....survey says...BZZZZZZTTTT! There was some neat action in the few fight sequences, but that was about it. One of the fight sequences seemed extremely silly. While everyone's gearing up to go on a hunt for this fabled beast, the Indian starts beatin' ass two at a time. One minute he's glaring at some nasty looking wench, and in the next scene, everybody is gathered around him in a circle and he's acting out the ice cream shop scene from Billy Jack? Huh? Did I miss something? First, why is he fighting these people? And secondly, where did Big Chief "Me Speekum Few Lines But Kickum Heap Many Ass" learn all the martial arts? Lo and behold, he becomes the symbol of spirituality in town and proceeds on to the local whorehouse, where he then finds a reluctant lady of the evening and pounds her like a Whack-a-Mole. The only thing gratuitous in this movie definitely wasn't the violence, it was the artsy bedroom scene between the good guy and his new found prostitute buddy.
A severe disappointment. This is a romance in disguise. There's a bit of action, but this is one of those movies that if you've seen the movie trailer...you've seen the action. I was beginning to fall asleep toward what I was hoping was the end of the movie. It seemed to drag on and on and on and on and...you get the picture. Now that I think about it...It's a FRENCH FILM!! Why did I think it would be anything other than totally lame...
