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.

American Samurai (1992)

American Samurai (1992)

 

Starring: David Bradley, Mark Dacascos, Valarie Trapp, Rex Ryon, John Fujioka, Douvi Cohen
Director: Sam Firstenberg
Action Director: Guy Norris, Douglas Milton

 

David Bradley’s career didn’t exactly “take off” after he took over for Michael Dudikoff in American Ninja 3: Blood Hunt.  Then again, maybe that was intentional on his part. Oh sure, he had a steady dream of gigs up until he retired from acting in 1997, but considering the output of over direct-to-video stars like Don “The Dragon” Wilson and Gary Daniels, who were starting up at about the same time, it kinda surprises me that Bradley wasn’t more prolific. American Samurai was Bradley’s fourth starring role after two American Ninja sequels and a forgotten erotic thriller called Lower Level.

The title is obviously a ploy to bring in the same audiences who gobbled up the American Ninja movies, albeit without the “We liked Dudikoff better” baggage attached to it. It was produced by Cannon Pictures, a distribution arm of MGM focused on low-budget movies. Such a movie was only appropriate, considering that the now-defunct Cannon Films had produced the American Ninja franchise. The resulting film, however, was less American Ninja and more Bloodsport. The film does little to separate itself from its inspiration, the exception being that this is one of the gorier American martial arts films of that time period. Apparently there is an NC-17 cut of the movie floating around out there.

An American couple and their baby, Andrew, are flying over Japan when they run into engine problems and crash into a mountainside forest. The couple dies, but baby Andrew is rescued by a kindly kenjutsu master (John Fujioka, of American Ninja) and taught the way of the samurai. As Andrew grows up, he is the subject of scorn by the master’s son, Kenjiro (Mark Dacascos, of Drive and John Wick 3), who resents the attention his father gives the gaijin. Things come to a head when an adult Andrew (Cyborg Cop’s David Bradley) receives the family katana as a symbol of his responsibility to carry on the Sanga family tradition. Kenjiro reveals to his father that he has joined the Yakuza and is promptly disowned by daddy.

Some years later (the movie just sort of jumps around without ever telling us how much time has passed), Andrew is now a top journalist living in Los Angeles. He survives an attempt on his life by a bunch of Hired Goons™ who make off with his sacred katana. A few months later, he uncovers evidence that Kenjiro might be pulling off hits in Istanbul, Turkey. He flies over there to investigate, accompanied by a plucky female photographer, Janet (Valarie Trapp). Andrew initially despises her, but they aren’t together for more than 24 hours before he’s bedding her. Every negative stereotype about women being attracted to condescending assholes is present in these early scenes.

After beating up some gangsters at a bar, Andrew is shanghaied by a Turkish crime boss (Douvi Cohen) and taken to the Arena of Death. This is an underground fight tournament where people duke it out, not too unlike Bloodsport’s kumite, but with bladed weapons instead of feet and fists. The reigning champion of the Arena is Kenjiro, and he’s eager to settle his past grievances with Drew. Meanwhile, Drew is goaded into fighting with the threat that the organizers will harm Janet if he doesn’t. Let the games begin!

So, Bloodsport With Swords American Samurai is obviously a far-from-original film. It even goes so far as to give Bradley’s Andrew Collins his own version of Jackson. That would be the burly, bearded Texan Harrison (Rex Ryon, of the other adaptation of The Man in the Iron Mask from 1998), whose specialty is with the Bowie knife. While watching this with a friend of mine, I had to ask out loud just how an overweight Texan could get invited to a clandestine fight competition in Turkey. With Bloodsport’s Jackson, you can imagine him participating in whatever was the 80s equivalent to the UFC—some sort of Rough-and-Tumble organization—and catching the attention of the organizers that way. In Harrison’s case…was he involved in underground knife-fighting in the States? My friend suggested that the guy had a series of VHS tapes (probably priced at about $39.95 a pop + shipping and handling) about how to skin a gator with a Bowie knife and that caught the attention of Arena of Death people.

The film features a rather odd assortment of contestants. One fellow wields a claymore and dresses as if he had just gotten back from auditions for a Deathstalker sequel. The guy is even billed as “Conan” and is played by stuntman Rocky McDonald, whose credits include Dark City and Mission Impossible II. There’s a blonde-haired Brit named McKinney (Ron Vreeken, who did fight choreography for Richard Norton’s Rage) who fights with a kwan do. One guy dresses in animal skins, wears a horned helmet, fights with a battle axe, and is referred to as The Swede. There are also a pair of Chinese fighters, one of whom sports a queue as if he were still living in the Qing Dynasty. A knife-wielding Texan and an American Samurai are probably the closest thing this tournament has to normal combatants.

The fighting was handled by veteran Hollywood stuntman Guy Norris, whose biggest recent jobs include both Suicide Squad films and Mad Max: Fury Road. A Milton Douglas, whom I am unfamiliar with (nor could I find anything about him on the IMDB, is credited as the film’s “Samurai Sword Instructor.” The fights vary wildly in length, quality and style. When McKinney takes on Conan, it feels like a failed attempt to mimic the sort of action you’d get in an 80s sword n’ sorcery movie. Some of Kenjiro’s fights feel more like a Japanese chambara film, with an emphasis on tension, economy of movement, and ending the fight in as few strokes as possible.

I’m guessing that when it came to the Asian guys, Norris just let them choreograph themselves. After all, the Chinese guy with the kwan do is played by none other than Dion Lam, who would later go onto Hollywood efforts like Spider-Man 2; Doom; and Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li. Lam was fairly early in his action directing career at this point, having helmed the fights in films like Shanghai, Shanghai and Revenge of Angel with Moon Lee. The guy with the queue, who wields the shuangdao (twin broadswords), is played by Anthony Szeto, who would later direct and choreograph WuShu: The Young Generation. It goes without saying that the fights between Phan Xu (Szeto) and Haing Yi (Lam), and Phan Xu and Kenjiro, are the best in the film. Those fights have flashy weapons demonstrations and more complex exchanges of attacks and blocks than you would expect from an American film of this vintage.

David Bradley, unfortunately, is overshadowed by his Asian colleagues. His opening fight with the hitmen at his apartment isn’t bad by American standards. He throws some nice kicks—he trained in both Shotokan Karate and Tae Kwon Do—and does a throw or two (he also had Aikido training). His fights at the Arena of Death, however, are less intense because his character is intent on not harming his opponents where possible. So it feels like he’s holding back with his sword skills, although he does get in some decent kicks. The movie really screws the pooch in the finale, which leads me to believe that the filmmakers ran out of money during filming and had to cobble the fight together with some posing from previous fights, plus scenes of swords hitting each other up close, without knowing with which character was swinging what.

Outside of the two fights in which two Chinese guys and a Filipino dude (with a Chinese martial arts background) show us how it’s done, there isn’t much of interest in American Samurai. David Bradley’s acting is still pretty stiff, although Mark Dacascos’s overacting—this was his first major role—makes Bradley look like a thespian. The story—such as it is—is full of holes and the phoned-in love subplot results in one of the unsexier love scenes I’ve seen in a movie like this. Add to that a frequently inappropriate and cheap Cassio keyboard soundtrack and you have one of the lesser straight-to-video martial arts films of the 1990s.

Alien Agent (2007)

Alien Agent (2007)

Starring: Mark Dacascos, Amelia Cooke, Emma Lahana, William McDonald, Kim Coates, Billy Zane, Darren Shahlavi
Director: Jesse V. Johnson
Action Director: Kirk Caouette, Luke LaFontaine

 

There was once a running joke among us Mark Dacascos fans at one of the message boards I post at where every Mark Dacascos review contained the phrase: “Mark Dacascos, who’s playing [insert ethnicity here] this week…” I’ve honestly never seen an actor get cast as so many different ethnicities during his career, even ones with whom he shares few, if any, physical traits. In American Samurai, he plays a Japanese fighter. In Cradle 2 the Grave, Drive, and China Strike Force, he plays a Chinese person. In Nomad, I believe he plays a Mongol. Then there’s the cult hit Brotherhood of the Wolf, in which he plays an Iroquois Indian…and the list goes on. This time around, Mark Dacascos plays an alien. A kung-fu kicking alien, mind you, but an alien nonetheless.

The film is pretty easy to follow. There’s an alien body snatcher named Rykker (Dacascos), who, despite the description, is a GOOD alien body snatcher, since he got his body from a dying thug, instead of an innocent bystander of sorts. Rykker is on the tail of a bunch of fellow alien body snatchers led by Isis (Amelia Cooke of Species III), a hot, chain-whip swinging, alien body snatcher. Isis and her team are stealing electronics and high-powered weapons and storing them in an abandoned power plant. Her goal: build a portal that the members of her species can pass through so that they can save their race and enslave the earth. She’s working under the orders of Sayton (Billy Zane of The Phantom fame, who was apparently on set for less than hour and probably just got a free lunch out for his troubles), an evil alien body snatcher rebel.

When we meet, Rykker, he’s engaging in a medium-speed car chase with Isis and her minions. After trading lots of bullets, Rykker engages in personal combat with one of them, who’s played by Darren Shahlavi (Tai Chi 2 and Ip Man 2). Rykker dispatches his opponent with the quickest of ease, perhaps giving substance to the characters’ remarks that he’s one of his planet’s greatest “guild warriors.” Unfortunately that doesn’t quite pan out, since most of the other fights that don’t involve human mercenaries (i.e. when he faces alien opponents) show him getting his butt kicked, after which he wins by a lucky shot. His showdowns with human opponents aren’t very interesting, either. He usually just whaps them with his ridge hand techniques and throws a few kicks that, honestly, any brown belt could perform adequately. Okay, got that off my chest.

So yeah, Rykker picks up a human companion in the form of Julie (Emma Lahana of Power Ranges: Dino Thunder), a blonde teenager (or young adult) whose aunt and uncle (owners of the local diner) are slaughtered by Isis and one of her cohorts for almost no reason. I mean, I can see why Isis would want to kill the people outside of the diner when she arrives to steal a truck full of electronics. But is it really necessary for her order her man to storm into the establishment and mow everybody down with an automatic weapon? Whatever. Anyway, Rykker, who’s posing as an FBI agent, ends up taking Julie along with him. The two make a habit of stealing other peoples’ cars, much like the Albert Pyun Captain America.

Julie slowly starts falling for Rykker and even tries to seduce him near the end, using the whole excuse of, “We’re both going to die and I don’t want to die a virgin.” Considering that the script doesn’t leave it very clear as to how old she is, it’s probably a small favor that we’re spared a sex scene between Dacascos and a minor (although Miss Lahana was 23 when she made this movie). She eventually gets captured and Dacascos has to storm the abandoned power plant, kill off the evil mercenaries without breaking a sweat, almost get beaten to death by Amelia, and then win via a lucky shot. The movie ends with Dacascos tracking down a couple of more criminals from his home planet and beating them up on a rooftop in Los Angeles or something.

If I could describe this movie with one word, it would be “lifeless” (“cheap” would come a close second). Dacascos is obviously uninterested in doing anything more than the necessary needed to earn a paycheck. Billy Zane registers as such a non-entity that I wonder why the filmmakers spent the extra money hiring him. Kirk Caouette’s fight choreography is generally visible, but lacking in energy and rhythm. It’s the sort of thing we’ve come to expect from cheap American martial arts films. I shouldn’t be too mad; this is the guy who choreographed Catwoman after all. The first fight scene against Darren Shahlavi shows a bit a promise. There’s nothing flashy, but both him and Dacascos are veteran screen fighters with some solid Hong Kong experience on their résumés and they perform their moves with the appropriate amount of energy. 

Things go downhill after that, although the brief moments of partial nudity from Amelia Cooke and Meghan Flather (who’s other film credit appears to be War, where she provided Jet Li and the audience with some full frontal nudity, if my memory doesn’t fail me), do threaten to make the film interesting again. The occasional fights also threaten to make the film interesting. Heck, the fact that Isis fights with a friggin’ chain whip, of all the Earth weapons she could have chosen, threatens to make the film interesting.

In the end, all of that amounts to very little and it makes me wish I were watching Drive, Only the Strong, or even Cradle 2 the Grave instead. How’s that on the tree of woe?