The creature feature: A lambasted genre of movie that critics loathe to the extreme, usually filled with abysmal special effects and completely lacking in plot.
Brotherhood of the Wolf: French film disguised as a creature feature, loved by most critics, filled with abysmal special effects and 2 hours worth of useless character development.
A mysterious creature is slaughtering villagers in a turn of the century French town and two heroes (Mark Dacascos and Samuel Le Bihan) are called in to put an end to it. The monster eludes them for most of the movie as the beast continues a small rampage. A mystery unfolds as the people are lied to and the stars of the film begin to uncover a sinister plot involving the "wolf."
I'm not sure this thesaurus next to me has enough adjectives for the word "horrible" to help me describe this movie. Coming in at just under two hours and thirty minutes, this movie drags on lifelessly, pulling any entertainment value right down with it. The pitiful creature referred to so many times early in the movie is only shown fleetingly for the first half only to finally be revealed as a ridiculously obvious CG wolf covered in some type of armor. Some Sci-Fi channel original movies have more convincing monsters than this.
A few fight sequences and some nice cinematography breathe some life into this one at times, but these few moments of film don't make up for the rest of the running time. The characters never seem to stop rambling on about how horrible this beast is, how it kills, or what they plan on doing about it. Of course, in the midst of all this, they find plenty of time to visit a whorehouse multiple times (seriously). Some characters have a blossoming romance, but it's nothing more than a blatant attempt to add some death to the otherwise lifeless characters. The references to Crouching Tiger on the back of the DVD sleeve are seriously misguided as no more than 10 minutes of film are used to show some fighting. Rest assured no one will be flying across rooftops or sword fighting in trees. All battles stay grounded here. This is a sad, sad excuse for entertainment. (* out of *****)
Brotherhood of the Wolf is presented in 2.35:1 widescreen. No pan and scam version is available on the format. The print varies wildly scene to scene, but most of the movie is extremely dark and the disc just doesn't handle it well at all. The bright orange on black palette (due to extensive use of candlelight which does make sense considering the time period) that is used for most of the film just looks garish. Grain in these scenes is not just distracting, but makes things difficult to see. Daylight sequences are just about perfect, hindered only by a miniscule amount of grain and minor compression artifacts. Sadly, these brightly colored scenes are few and far between and that makes this already bad film even harder to watch. (**)
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Article comments
1 - Kurt Nordstrom
I thought that the movie was outlandish, over-the-top, incoherent and gratuitous. Strangely, though, it was a great ride. I was well entertained throughout. Crazy, but good.