Le Pacte des Loups

[1/22/02 -haha, still fucked up the name. ok, should be right now. damn frenchy types.] [sorry for butchering the original name in my haste. now corrected.] went to see Brotherhood of the Wolf tonight, and despite what I've been hearing from word of mouth and film critics, it was a very good movie.

Though saying that, I should get the problems I had with out in the air first.

One, it could of been condensed in a few parts. Some parts seemed to drag, especially later on, in say the last 30 or 45 minutes [it's about 2.5 hours long]. Secondly, the plot could of been restructured for better flow of the storyline, which jumped occasionaly to pass time in the story.

Other then those two elements, I completely enjoyed myself. The action was not a crouching tiger/matrix copy that it may seem to be from the previews, but very much a unique style, and shot really well. The plot felt like a mix between Apocolypse Now & the 13th Warrior, set in 1764 France, just before the revolution, and with a dash of beowulf/warewolf suspense thrown in for good measure.

It was quite violent, which appeased me, and the fight/action scenes were shot with such great cinematography and style, that I smiled the whole way through them... most especially the first fight, which paid beautiful attention to the rain and mud.

The two main characters, Mani & Gregoire Fronsac [I think that's how you spell it], work well together, and bring in a mix of worldly skills & beliefs to an otherwise closed-minded rural frence-christian society.

all in all, it had a good plot, very good style/cinematography, & wonderful action. On the down side, it dragged in a few parts and could of been tweaked in the script just to glue itself together better. But this surely wasn't enough to weigh down the good parts of the film, at least not for me.