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Summary: Feast for the eyes, but turn off your brain!
Review: Lush period piece . . . PERIOD. It features cookie-cutter characters, a crazed mish-mash of genres and styles, a painfully meandering plot (if you can call it that), gratuitous violence and over-the-top exhibitions of martial arts. The movie certainly appealed to lots of guys (including my brother) who checked their brains at the door, so I predict it'll make a fortune in DVD sales. That was probably the aim of the French: make a big-budget American-style film, throw in martial arts, add special effects . . . and make a ton of money.
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Summary: We Must Preserve the Papacy from the Evils of the Illuminati
Review: Set during the era of the French Revolution, an insane monster prowls the countryside and it is up to the martial arts expertise of an American Indian and the royal taxidermist to defeat it. The "beast" - linked to an evil Freemasonic cult "The Brotherhood of the Wolf" hellbent on causing insurrection for the French monarchy. Featuring the epic confrontation between the Age of Reason and the evils unleashed by the Enlightenment and the forces residing in the tradition of the Catholic Church. The beast of course represents the forces unleashed in the French Revolution. This cult of illuminati seers must be stopped!
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Summary: Beware the wolf...
Review: If you watch this movie with the complete intent to be generally entertained, you won't be disappointed. Sexy, action-packed, and interesting, Brotherhood of the Wolf will keep you guessing until the end regarding wolf!
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Summary: Great Movie
Review: It`s a combination of suspence and a kind of The Matrix because of fights whitin the film.
Buy it !! You won`t reagret.
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Summary: Who said French Films were boring?
Review: Oh man. This is a great thrill ride.
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Summary: good story but one flaw
Review: The setting is 18th(?) century France and the story is about a mysterious beast who has been killing people in the country side. Two specialists are called in to capture and kill this beast. One of the specialists is an American Indian (Mani) with martial arts skills the other is a French scholar (Fronsac) on Biology. The first fight scece of the movie involves Mani and Fronsac being attacted by a group of thugs who were beating up on a man and woman for unknown reasons. This first fight scene is perhaps the best in the whole film. It really shows that Mani (Dacascos) is well versed with the staff. Although it seems awfully odd that an American Indian highly skilled in an Asian martial art would be travelling in 18th century France, I think that's one of the things that adds to the mystique of Dacasco's character and makes the film all the more interesting. On the DVD, one of the deleted scenes is an extension of this first fight scene that was removed because of a character inconsistancy. This scene was so good that I watched it numerous times. The film has beautiful scenery, a good soundtrack and a well-paced plot. The only flaw in the film was that one of the facts involving the beast was not explained but just left hanging even though it was intergral in resolving the main plot.
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Summary: Never quite lives up to its potential
Review: A wonderful story of sex, violence, and political intrigue with a tasty dash of historical allegory thrown in. What a shame its telling is undermined by a resolute focus on slow-mo fight sequences, over-enthusiastic foley, and an indulgent screenplay which just doesn't know when to quit. At least thirty minutes too long, some judicious rewriting would have improved it immensely - not just reducing the length but tightening both the focus and pace. Only when the "wolf" is on screen do things really take off. But even then, the special effects seem at least ten years out of date. For all its striving for epic grandeur, the film simply lacks the production values to realize its vision. In the hands of a great director like Patrice Chéreau ("Queen Margot"), Roman Polanski or Peter Jackson, and a more imaginative cinematographer such as Darius Khondji or Dante Spinotti, it might easily have been a masterpiece. Even Tim Burton could have done something better with this material: his "Sleepy Hollow" is the closest Hollywood has come to this sort of film, and it was better in almost every way. "Brotherhood of the Wolf" is thrillingly ambitious and still quite entertaining - its heady mixture of high jinks, history and horror is at least something reasonably new - but rather than leave you grinning, it's more likely to have you dreaming about what might have been.
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Summary: Un peu Bete
Review: One naturally wants to love a big budget French gothic tale set in pre-revolutionary France. However the best you can say about this movie is that IS a big budget French gothic tale set in pre-revoluationary France. It's the entertainment equivalent of French junk food. And while French junk food has its merits--it's certainly different, and kind of rare--it's still junk food. This movie is kind of like Tarzan with really well-cut coats and tri-corner hats and some martial arts type action sequences. The two leads are fairly drab. The best actor in the movie is the incredibly easy to spot villain (Vincent Cassel who played the Duke of Anjou in Elizabeth), the native American sidekick is rather stereotyped, and the movie doesn't appreciate him as much as it thinks it does. Though Monica Belluci, as the Italian prostitute is rather good. It all winds up with a transparent indictement of current Right-wing forces in French politics, which I agree with, but didn't need this movie to tell me. And that MONSTER!!! Boy is it UGLY. One of the better parts of the DVD is the directors presentation of scenes that were cut from the film. He analyzes the scenes that are not even in the movie for symbolic meaning with an intensity that ought to earn him an honorary degree in Comp Lit and Philosophy at Yale and a genuflection from Jacques Derrida. It's hilarious.
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Summary: ... the editor
Review: This is a great, visually stunning film. However, it is about 45 minutes too long. It's a shame when the viewer is waiting for the film to end. I think that editing all of the unnecessary love story out of the film would have done wonders for brevity. The girl the lead character lusts after isn't even all that spectacular, inferior to the prostitute without a doubt. Other than that, this really is far superior to any American action film of the last 5 years and semi-rooted in historical fact. In reality, the werewolf scare in France during the time has ultimately been linked to hallucinogenic reaction to a fungus in the rye bread given to peasants, but that's another story. I have a slight problem with an Iriquois Indian and a French taxidermist being so proficient in marital arts, but I do believe strongly in the suspension of disbelief. Watch the film, and for God's sakes, watch it in French with English subtitles. You will lose so much with Godzilla-like English dubbing.
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Summary: GREATNESS!...
Review: Brotherhood of the wolf is one of my favorite movies of all time. It was brilliantly directed and acted. The main draw of this movie is the "creature". The creature is only in the movie for a small fraction of the movie which at first had me perplexed. But the thing is its not even about the creature, the creature's role in the movie is symbollic. The main theme is religion v.s. government which the creature symbolizes. If you want to see a great movie then look no further, brotherhood of the wolf rocks.
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