BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF

France, 18th century: in an isolated region of the south of the country, a striking series of horrible murders, whose victims are mostly women and children, unsettles the population, increasingly convinced that the culprit of the terrible bloody events is a monstrous being, nicknamed "the Beast of Gévaudan". King Louis XV decides to send to the place the knight de Fronsac with his friend-collaborator Mani, an Indian expert in martial arts, to investigate the murders and reveal the secret of the beast… It is one of the most expensive films in the history of French cinema, and European cinema in general, with its sixty billion budget, which draws its strengths both from the high-profile cast (among others, the "our" Monica Bellucci and her husband Vincent Cassel), as well as from the extreme care of the sets and costumes, and finally, from the choice of a subject (based on a historical event, skillfully novelized for the occasion) original and intriguing. Director Christophe Gans ("Crying Freeman") directs the film choosing not to give it a precise stamp, mixing different elements, taken here and there from various film genres (skillfully selected among those most loved by the general public): it goes from pure horror, to the John Woo-style action movie, passing through the adventure film and the investigative thriller in the style of "Sleepy Hollow"; if, from a certain point of view, the choice may turn out to be spot on (the mixture between different genres makes the film appreciated by a more heterogeneous audience), on the other hand it makes the film lose some identity. In the end, the most impactful sequences are the action ones, mostly performed by a Mark Dacascos in great shape, and the scene, with which the film opens, of the death of the peasant girl, torn apart by the "beast". Also debatable is the other "basic" choice of the film, that is, to show "the beast": as the rules of the "thriller" teach, what is hidden in the dark creates much more suspense, what the spectator can only imagine, rather than redundant special effects (by the way, in the case in question, not very well made). In short, "Brotherhood of the Wolf" could be defined as a sort of "Hollywood Kolossal", of which it also possesses all the merits (high spectacularity, great visual impact) but also the defects (exaggeration of situations, shallow depth of the characters) that still manages to make you spend a couple of hours of entertainment.