Back in 2002, I had developed as a more well-rounded cinema junkie. I was no longer afraid of subtitles, long movies and costume dramas. Yet, I still loved my most basic cinematic pleasures, those being bullets, blood, pretty people and martial arts. With that mindset, I was predestined to love Brotherhood of the Wolf. It’s a monster movie. It’s a kung-fu movie. It’s an expensive period epic. It’s in French. It’s 2.5 hours long.
My tastes have grown a little more high-minded. The film could easily lose at least 20 minutes without losing its epic feel. Some fight scenes are silly, especially in the first half. In fact, today the film has a faint whiff of pretentious schlock about it, but I still think it’s a film to love. Certainly unlike any other film you will see. Furthermore, director Christophe Gans and his spectacularly talented creative team work overtime to sell you the story realistically. The martial arts is explained. The creature has a very simple reasoning behind it. It doesn’t strain credibility to work as a slick, bawdy, over-the-top suspense mystery, a mystery that is hard to guess and very clever.
Gans takes a true story – that’s right, the basics of this really happened – and uses it to make a movie that wants to entertain at every turn. There’s a great moment right at the middle of the film, where the narrator explains that what you’ve seen is the story as everyone knows it, and what you’re about to see is what really happened. At this point, the many dining and parlor room scenes give way for a host of imaginative set-pieces. In fact we get three of the best scenes in the film back-to-back-to-back.
First, there’s our first reveal of the creature, during an attack on a leaf-covered pond. Gans punctuates the terror with some excellent freeze frames. Then we get the first scene where our heroes face off against the creature. It slips into the wine cellar while everyone walks on the boards above. The people sense they’re not alone, and then the lock to the cellar pops off into the air in slow-mo. It’s a moment to take a deep breath because the moment the film’s been building towards is about to happen.
Immediately after, our heroes work through the mystery while trying out their various weapons in a pumpkin patch. These are not regular, realistic pumpkins. No, when these babies are hit with bullets and blades, they explode. You wouldn’t want it any other way… and by this point more of the best scenes of the movie still lie ahead.
The effects that were dated then look positively horrendous now. However, the film remains very satisfying. The period detail bringing elegance to a pretty cruddy world, reminded me of Hammer Horror. This also contains the greatest transition in the history of cinema, a claim I see often on social media, usually the bait to get you to watch. The correct answer is here, as the camera glides up the curves of Monica Bellucci, her curves become the curved landscape of the next scene.
Leave A Comment