Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001)

Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001) French Title: Le Pacte des Loups

Starring: Samuel Le Bihan, Mark Dacascos, Jérémie Renier, Vincent Cassel, Émilie Dequenne, Monica Bellucci, Jacques Perrin, Christian Marc, Karin Kriström, Philippe Nahon, Virginie Darmon, Vincent Céspedes, Hans Meyer, Jean-Paul Farré

Director: Christophe Gans

Action Director: Phillip Kwok

France, 1764. Almost thirty years before the French Revolution, the province of Gévaudan is having a pest control problem. A “beast” has been praying on women and children, mainly those belonging to the peasantry. The locals now live in fear of the beast and news of the attacks have reached the Court of Louis XV. This has been compounded by the circulation of a book that claims that the attacks are God’s retribution for the moral decay of the French Court, further stoking the fires that will erupt into outright bloodshed and mass executions in a quarter decade.

The Court thus sends one of their “naturalists,” Sir Gregoire de Fronsac (Samuel Le Bihan), a veteran of the French-Indian Wars in the New World, to investigate. Accompanying him is his blood-brother, an Iroquois Indian named Mani (Mark Dacascos, of Drive and Cradle 2 the Grave). They are received by the Marquis d’Apcher (Hans Meyer) and his son, Tomas (Jérémie Renier). Tomas quickly takes to Gregoire, mainly on account of the former’s fascination with what life in the New World was like. Gregoire is introduced to a bunch of people from the local nobility, including Jean-Francois de Morangias (Vincent Cassel, of Ocean’s Twelve) and his hot sister, Marianne (Émilie Dequenne).

Popular sentiment attributes the attacks to an especially large wolf, although both Mani and Gregoire doubt that. The latter does so on account of the bite structure of the wounds found on a naked woman lying in a pond, which doesn’t correspond to that of a common Eurasian wolf. Mani, on the other hand, is as spiritual as we assume most Native Americans are and since the wolf is his totem animal, he cannot identify the beast among the local wolf population. Not that the locals, who all assume that American Indians are ignorant savages, really care what Mani thinks.

The hunt for the beast is initially spearheaded by Captain Duhamel (Eric Prat), whose band of bumbling guards are more effective in harassing the local peasantry than they are in finding the monster. Meanwhile, Gregoire splits his time between trying to court Marianne and enjoying nights of pleasure with an Italian prostitute named Sylvia (Monica Bellucci, of The Matrix Reloaded and Shoot’em Up). Eventually, the Court sends the king’s Bearer of Arms, Antoine de Beauterne (Johan Leysen), to relieve Captain Duhamel and assume responsibility for hunting the beast. Gregoire quickly learns that Beauterne’s presence is strictly political: the circulation of the aforementioned book is really starting to cause problems among the general public and decisive action needs to be taken to show them that the king has hardly “fallen from grace.”  So, Beauterne kills a wolf and brow-beats Gregoire, also an accomplished taxidermist, into making the wolf “into the beast.” You know, so the King has something to show his people and allay their fears.

After his visit to Paris, Gregoire and Mani quickly return to Gédauvan to find the real beast. And that is where our two heroes, assisted by Tomas d’Apcher, will find themselves knee-deep in a conspiracy that goes beyond the local wildlife running amok…

The Beast of Gévaudan is an actual piece of French History, almost comparable to England’s Jack the Ripper in that we’re still not quite sure who (or what, in this case) the culprit is. The beast terrorized the countryside of the Gévaudan province between 1764 and 1767, ultimately taking the lives of about 113 people (according to a 1987 study). The creature was apparently shot and killed by a wolf hunter named Jean Chastel, who appears in this film as a minor character (played by the late Phillippe Nahon). To this day, scholars are still not sure what animal the Beast was, with hypthoses ranging from a larger-than-average wolf, a particularly pesky pack of them, to an escaped lion or hyena that would have been brought back from French colonies in Africa.

The film does include a lot of historical personages in the story: Yes, the initial hunt for the beast was supervised by Captain Duhamel, who proved to be incompetent at his job. At one point, the Court did send François Antoine (along with his son, Antoine de Beauterne), a royal arms bearer, to hunt the beast. There was indeed a young Marquis d’Apcher who tried to catch the beast using traps—there is a sequence like this near the end. And yes, the Bishop of Mende, renamed Father Sardis (Jean-Paul Farré) for the film, did preach from the pulpit that the Beast of Gévaudan was indeed a scourge sent from God.

So, does that make Brotherhood of the Wolf a historical film? Sort of. Kinda. The thing with unsolved mysteries is that filmmakers have the creative license to tell whatever story they wish that fits into the scant facts available. The final explanation for the Beast of Gévaudan is probably a bit more plausible than the portrayal of the Beast itself, although I won’t explain why in order to avoid spoilers (on a 24-year-old film). That said, there are A LOT of characters to keep track of, all of whom have their own agendas and secrets. Although the explanation of the beast is sort of plausible, there are details to the story that are a bit out there, like the Vatican’s answer to MI6 getting involved in the mix.

The film is actually a multi-genre concoction mixing elements of history, horror and action, more specifically martial arts. Yes, the ethnically-fluid Mark Dacascos is playing another nationality for the umpteenth time: he has played Chinese (Cradle 2 the Grave and China Strike Force); Japanese (American Samurai and Crying Freeman); Mongolian (Nomad); Thai (The Legend of Bruce Lee); and this time he’s playing Native American. A Native American played by a Filipino actor trained in Chinese martial arts. There is even a smidgen of eroticism, thanks to Monica Bellucci, one of the world’s most beautiful women. In other words, Brotherhood of the Wolf offers a little something for all viewers.

Of course, since I’m reviewing it for this site, my own focus will be on the martial arts content. This is one of two films that former Venom Mob troupe member Phillip Kwok did in France, the other being Les Samourais, starring Yasuaki Kurata. He has stated in interviews that when he went to Hollywood to work on Tomorrow Never Dies, he was given very little elbow room to show off his creativity. He then remarked that for Brotherhood of the Wolf, director Christophe Gans gave him more free reign over the action. You see this a lot with the weapons the characters use, which range from standard quarterstaffs to iron claws (think The Owl from the Daredevil comics) to tomahawks to a bone sword that functions like Ivy’s whip-sword from Soul Calibre. 

Mark Dacascos fans will like that he gets three fight sequences to demonstrate his skills. The first is a fight in the rain against Captain Duhamel’s thuggish guards, who are picking on a woman they accuse of being a witch. The fight is a mixture of his kicks and some staff work. The next fight, where he fights a bunch of gypsy hunters at the registration for a big hunt, is probably his best. Lots of good bootwork from both sides—I assume the stuntmen were trained in Savate and Asian martial arts themselves--and a nice length. The third fight has him fighting those same gypsy hunters, this time with a tomahawk. The choreography is even better here, though the fight is a lot shorter than the previous one. Actor Samuel Le Bihan, whose character has largely been an observer and thinker, steps up in the last thirty minutes, showing us that his character did learn more than a thing or two about combat during his tenure in the New World. Lots of stylish knife and sword action in two major set pieces at the end. Great stuff all around, especially by 2001 non-Hong Kong standards. And even then, Hong Kong was suffering a massive decline in quality of their action films at the time.

I think most viewers will take exception to the film’s length, as it runs close to two and a half hours. Although that is the standard running time for most Marvel films since Civil War, this is a French film and the pacing is a bit more languid outside of the action sequences. Director Gans takes time to have the characters interact and develop a complex web of relationships between all of them. For the most part, the investment pays off, but it takes it sweet time to do so. But the film is interesting enough to keep most viewers involved, even during its lulls.