Brotherhood Of The Wolf has a lot to offer cinema lovers in the way of entertainment, but I digress this is a very cerebral film as well. There is excellent cinematography and atmosphere,suspense and intrigue, intense eroticism, mystery, terror and superb action and martial arts fight choreography. The performances are superb with a lead that resembles HHH, European love goddess Monica Bellucci and the much underrated B action star Mark Dacascos (who shines in the support role in this). Brotherhood Of The Wolf blends genres quite successfully in this period action hybrid film and is a very unique and well made film that is very visceral, but also will thrill the more intellectual, thinking viewers as well. Director Christopher Gans did a very good job putting this all together and this is a very original movie that should please fans of action, horror, suspense, as well as appeal to the art-house crowd as well. Overall, Brotherhood Of The Wolf is a very impressive film.

Now this is a bizarre film. A startling mix of action, historical drama, thriller, horror, fantasy and (most importantly) erotica. It is a film that is hard to categorise and indeed lurches quickly from one to the other, often within the same scene.Watching this, I suspect my reason for enjoying it so much is that it is charming and inventive. It is a flawed film (something I will elaborate on later) but it is so shameless in its style and story that I can't help but be swept up in it.The story itself starts out very simply, a Beast (la bete!) is terrorising a region of France so the King sends a taxidermist and knight to the region to capture the beast and bring it back to Paris for examination. The knight, Gregoire de Fronsac brings with him an Indian, Mani. The film soon plunges forward with other tales of incest, political intrigue, assassination and religion at an alarming rate, so fast in fact that some of the more subtle parts of the film don't get the time and the resolution that they deserve.Some of the actors are extremely familiar, including Vincent Cassell (one of my favourites) as the slimy and creepy Jean-Francois de Morangias, who lost an arm in Africa to a lion. Samuel Le Bihan (Fronsac) and Monica Belluci (Sylvia) are reasonably good but despite the genre blending nature of the film, the characters (among others) are irritatingly under-developed. Whilst each has a reasonable back story, motive and so on, there is little characterisation beyond that.The director, Christophe Gans appears to be a huge fan of slow motion, the effect coming in often at bizarre and borderline intrusive times. Whilst the action is very entertaining, the fighting scenes in some cases are obviously shoe-horned into the scene with little or no relevance to what is currently going on. The film also goes on for a long time and could easily shave off several scenes overall and not lose pacing or characterisation. All in all, an odd film. I find it really quite entertaining and inventive, enough that I can overlook the flaws that can be levelled at it.

I first watched "Brotherhood of the Wolf" several years ago (it came out in 2001, after all)... back then, dramas with good action scenes were a dime a dozen. However, nowadays, action movies seem to lack directors who know what they are doing... which makes these older movies seem all the more better.The story of "Brotherhood of the Wolf" is very compelling, being set in a French province in 1764 and the few years after-wards. I won't say any more of the story, since I don't want to spoil it at all (this should be my first non-spoilers review).This is mostly a drama, but the action scenes serve both to advance the plot, and to give depth to the characters... from the first one, within the first few minutes, which introduces some of the main characters.What makes this one of my faves, however, is all of the parts combine to produce both an entertaining experience, and a work of art. The pace, narration (which is sparse), characters, actors, directing, post-production editing, and soundtrack all combine so seamlessly that you hardly notice the time passing by.Well, anyhow, go watch it... 10/10, perfect score by me. In fact, I think I'll go watch it one more time.

True, it's good points do include Monica Belucci and that it relates to a true story. Also must be said I unfortunately watched an over-dubbed version (there's something about hearing the dialogue in french that makes you forgive almost anything...). And finally, it was in the least quite inventive and novel. However, the film seems to have been thrown together from random cuttings. It fails to lead the viewer anywhere in particular, darting from inviting sympathy for the villains to rejoicing at their come-uppance, so many pointless/directionless subplots, including love and deception, that have no bearing, and ridiculous moments of pretend pathos. That we have American indians/french doing jet li moves, as another viewer mentioned should have said it all (even disregarding that its captured in an amateurish way when compared with the Hong Kong greats).