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Watching the trailer, Brotherhood of the Wolf appears a strange beast. A sort of Last of
the Mohicans meets Romeo Must Die by way of Dangerous Liaisons. Intriguing if nothing else.
The film charmed the arthouse circuit & I can honestly say I've never heard or read a
negative word against it. So, what the hell is it about & is it any good?
In fact Brotherhood falls neatly into the aforementioned category, a sort of 17th century, high
kicking, violent pomp & circumstance epic aping the most dyonisian of John Woo fare with director
Christophe Gans boldly blurring genres & somehow blending witchcraft, modernity, martial arts,
historical fact, romance, horror, conspiracy theory & the French Revolution together into an
impressively comprehendible & admirable tale. The scope of the project is truly dazzling in light of
it's attention to historical detail, sea of locations, nymphomatic choreography & sheer extravagance
on every level. Gans proves IT IS possible to make a Hollywood film with Tinseltown production values
outside of America and even make it MORE entertaining, MORE intelligent & MORE impressive than the
bulk of US trash.
But this is the catch (22) & where the film falls down. In making an explosive, visually attractive French
language film, how do you sell it to an English speaking audience? There's way too much happening for
subtitles (something John Woo discovered with Hard Boiled) & so the producers have resorted to the
evils of dubbing. And what an ugly job they've made of it. The voice overs lack the ebullience of
the production & male & female parts are divided up into testosterone drowned ex-porn stars & mouseketeers.
The recurring image I get everytime someone opens their gob is of a curly-locked Heidi waxing lyrical
with Grandpa during those long summer holidays before video recorders and it is this truly amatuerish
cacophony that spoils what is essentially a great triumph of filmmaking. Of course, I'm not saying I can come
up with any better method of crossing the language barrier than dubbing or subtitles but maybe we
should start thinking about one...
Whatever, Brotherhood of the Wolf remains a smashing celluloid treat it's just a shame the post-production
team didn't spend more on the dubbing...
RATING: (c)Limer 2002
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Brotherhood of the Wolf (DVD: October 2002)
