Last week I saw The Brotherhood of the Wolf (Le Pacte des Loups), a historical French fantasy-horror film currently showing in the cheap theaters of the Twin Cities. Genuinely scary in some parts, it recounts a French legend about a beast that went around the countryside snacking on peasants. Clearly before the birth of the Buddy System, The Beast takes down lone wandering girls against the terrifyingly isolated backdrop of rural France. This monster is a great big mystery so a young naturalist named Fronsac is sent from Paris to investigate and hopefully end the maulings.
Fronsac brings with him his sidekick Mani, a native Canadian priest with a John Dunbar-like connection to wild animals and some mad fighting skillz. Mani is the star of several impressively choreographed fight scenes, especially his first single-handed battle against the pack of freaky gypsies. The movie cashes in on some Crouching Tiger moves, like the gravity defying wall run. For the most part, the action is quite riveting but the weapons of choice are usually sticks. As a viewer raised in the age of semiautomatics, rocket launchers and proton-packs, sticks bore me. I realize it hurts to get hit by one, don't get me wrong, but by the end when Fronsac bursts into stick wielding revenge, I'd seen more than enough.
Playing second fiddle to the horror and action is a porcelain skinned aristocratic love interest with a creepy over-bred brother along with a clown car full of other subplots that spread the movie a bit too thin. The subtitles will weed out those with severe ADD, but even as a very patient and attentive person I discovered ants in my pants as the two-hour mark came and went. But for only two dollars and nothing else to do on a Sunday night I'm not complaining.
