OF WOLF AND MAN

by
Lovell
Mahan-Moutaw

I am unfortunately duped by marketing ploys on a basis that I would describe as "far too often". So, when I should have been paying to see a possible treasure, such as Gosford Park, I instead went to see Brotherhood of the Wolf. From the trailer I had the impression it would be something on the order of The Matrix meets Interview With the Vampire, except French, which would give it some class and a good wardrobe.

The good wardrobe was there.

The class was sadly lacking.

Here's the story. Some years before the French Revolution, a province in France is having trouble with a wolf that keeps killing women and children. It is said to be omnipotent and beyond evil. (The wolf, I mean. The movie can only be described as the latter.)

For some bizarre reason, the King sends a gardener and taxidermist to study the wolf. This gardener, Gregoire (Samuel Le Bihan) was also a soldier at some point in his checkered past (although he looks to be about thirty) and has a sidekick, Mani (Mark Dacascos), who happens to be Native American.

Mani and Gregoire are cool. We know this because they have their leather coats buttoned up over the lower half of their faces and they don't look stupid in tri-corner hats. Mani and Gregoire arrive in the province and happen onto a gang of thugs, dressed as women, who are beating an old man and his daughter. Mani dispatches the group of thugs effortlessly with martial arts techniques that we find out later he must have learned from his Iroquois Indian tribe (wha?). This fight scene is shot in a series of slow-mo to regular-mo shots that include a lot of mud and water flying (it is raining heavily, thus the reason Mani and Gregoire have their coats buttoned high). The slo-mo/regular-mo is a theme in the visual stylization of the film, we already know, but I won't speak further of that, as I might ruin your incredulity at the incomprehensible gore of one of the first scenes.

After the thugs get the shit kicked out of them, Mani and Gregoire go to the home of the young Marquis who wants to see his province put to rights and the wolf laid out on Gregoire's taxidermy table. The Marquis unfortunately looks like he was cast out of the band A Flock of Seagulls due to his bad hair.

Gregoire, who is perhaps the only sexy gardener and taxidermist in history who happens to have a sidekick, takes his task seriously and immediately sets about studying things and flirting outrageously with the local pretty girl. Mani is practically silent and spends a lot of time looking around knowingly, getting into slo-mo/regular-mo fights where he can twitch his long, dark locks, and communicating non-verbally with the inordinate amount of wolves that prowl the province.

We are treated to a great deal of incomprehensible plot that is just an excuse for these guys to look cool in their 18th century leather gear and for the makers of the film to shoot some stuff in what might be a passable recreation of a bordello.

All hell breaks loose, maybe literally - and not surprisingly, our taxidermist also turns out to be able to fight like Mani, except without the conscience, and all is well in the end, kinda. I mean, we are never let into a few secrets, or maybe I didn't catch them because I had my hands over my eyes.

Around the time where Mani shows up in a loincloth with his face painted better than I can paint my own (and I'm pretty good at that, considering the practice I've had) and feeds the young Marquis some peyote, for no other conceivable purpose than that the filmmakers felt a need to embody every general fact they knew about Native Americans in the character of Mani, I gave up on this picture.

I couldn't figure out whether this was some guy's wet dream or some girl's romantic fantasy. Alas, it failed at both. Brutal, gory, and dumb, Brotherhood of the Wolf is a mess - not, however, an unsightly one. It is shot gorgeously, even sumptuously, and if I wasn't giggling so hard I might have been seduced by the beautiful sets, scenery and costumes.

For all the money they obviously had, the special effects were one step above Xena, Warrior Princess, and the fight scenes were choreographed in a way that made me think Xena would begin to pick her teeth and watch Gabrielle kick Mani and Gregoire's asses without breaking a sweat.

The amount of silliness was stupifying. I don't know what was funnier, Gregoire getting stabbed by some mysterious Italian beauty in a bordello and watching her lick his blood from the blade and then coming back for more (sex that is, I'm not certain he was really into the stabbing, I could be wrong) or the bad guy fighting Gregoire in the end wearing a Marilyn Manson cast-off corset.

Screenwriters Christophe Gans (who also directed) and Stephane Cabel obviously had some bones to pick, but they just kept worrying too many of them: political, historical and environmental, with a bit of class and race consciousness thrown in (but not much, considering Mani, the Native American sidekick, who did everything but call Gregoire "kemosabe").

I suppose I should give them credit for being equal opportunists in their ridiculousness. The women were somewhat intelligent, and although Mani drew the line at fighting them, Gregoire had no problems slashing the rejects-from-the-Thunderdome chickie lickies to shreds.

I recommend this movie. Wholeheartedly. It is uproariously funny. I mean, I haven't laughed that hard at a film since before Eddie Murphy's ego destroyed his talent. No, it's not The Matrix meets Interview With the Vampire. Not even close. But it is the best bad movie I've seen in a long, long time.

©2002 Lovell Mahan-Moutaw
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