Stats: 142 minutes. Directed by Christophe Gans. Written by Stephane Cabel, Christophe Gans. Starring Samuel Le Bihan, Vincent Cassel, Mark Dacascos, Emilie Dequenne, Monica Bellucci. Subtitled dialogue.

The Brotherhood of the Wolf was/is a wonderful movie, with an intriguing plot and talented actors (not to mention the overflow of action and martial-arts-style fighting). I really, really liked it. But then... well, there's the matter of violence. I won't lie to any of you: I rather like adventure movies, and the usual clash of sword fighting, and all of that. I appreciate that sort of thing. You might even say I enjoy it.

... But not to this extent. There was blood /everywhere/. A woman died within the first five minutes. And it wasn't just a /death/. You know the kind I'm talking about. The nearly tender type where the woman quietly falls asleep to the sound of her children weeping beside her. It wasn't this type of death. It was the kind where she was violently torn apart by a ravenous beast (Which, actually, the story revolves, more or less, around).

I hid my eyes. And I think it should be known that, in the days before seeing 'Lord of the Rings' {which has a review forthcoming}, I has a burning lust to 'See some Orc blood spatter'. This sort of thing really doesn't bother me normally, as you can see, and so I thought I should make a point of it. And now I have, and therefore will go on, but in a much happier tone.

The story revolves, as I have said, around a beast which is ravaging the French countryside, killing women and children.The main character, Gregoire de Fronsac (Le Bihan) and his bum-kicking American Indian blood brother Mani (Dacascos) are sent in to find and excommunicate the beast. The plot is so twisted that it took even me (who sees far too many movies and has a collection of halves of tickets in her room that fills a cigar box twice) quite a while before I knew what exactly was going on.

I would give you more details on it, but I really can't without revealing too much of the plot. But let's generalise it and say this: there are romances had, a whorehouse (not directly involved with aforementioned romance) military coups aplenty, and a whole lot of martial-arts butt-kicking. And a lot of death. And a really big monster thingy. I'm not saying anything else involving plot though. Go and see it, is all I'm going to say.

I must add, on a bit of a funny note, that I left the theatre thinking all my internal monologues in French. It was a bit disturbing, but really really fun.

All in all, this movie received 4 out of five 's. (I removed the last one because all the gore did kind of disturb me).

Jedi Jade

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