accessAtlanta

Grade: B+

Verdict: A beauty of a beast movie.

Details: Starring Samuel Le Bihan and Mark Dacascos. Directed by Christophe Gans. Rated R for sex, violence, brief nudity. In French with subtitles. Two hours, 23 minutes.

Rate it: Write your own review

Review: Not since Hammer Films' "The Hound of the Baskervilles" or Bruce the shark in "Jaws" has there been a beast onscreen like the Beast of Gevaudan.

And this beast may have really existed. Between 1765 and 1768, more than 100 - perhaps as many as 300 - men, women and children were killed by something in rural France. The creature was never caught, never killed, never explained. It became a well-known French legend, an unsolved mystery that persists to this day.

The exquisitely over-the-top French horror movie "The Brotherhood of the Wolf" offers one solution. Here's how it goes. In 1765, King Louis XV, bothered by reports of the killings, sends court naturalist Grégoire de Fronsac (Samuel Le Bihan) to find out what this creature is, get rid of it and put a damper on the roiling emotions of the superstitious country folk who are already unhappy with Louis' Age of Reason. De Fronsac arrives with his blood brother, Mani (sinewy and charismatic martial arts champ Mark Dacascos), a Mohawk Iroquois he met while adventuring in the New World.

The two soon discover that there's more than a beast on the prowl; there's a nasty and potentially explosive mix of politics, religion, secret cults and the supernatural. And all those mauled and dead bodies. Mani's mystical connection with nature, meanwhile, puts him on the track of the creature.

Writer-director Christophe Gans has made a deliriously entertaining film - part myth, part monster, part "The Matrix." Plus, he's given it the primal, pulse-pounding rush of Michael Mann's "The Last of the Mohicans." There's a lot here that's bloody and unsettling, so be forewarned. Conversely, there are scenes in the aristocrats' drawing rooms as poisonously civilized as anything in "Dangerous Liaisons."

"The Brotherhood of the Wolf" is a demented mélange of historical drama, period romance, martial arts flick, horror film and just about anything else you can think of (except, perhaps, something with Woody Allen). It may be too much for many moviegoers (add sex, animal cruelty and incest). But if you can give yourself over to its Wagnerian tone and its feverish imagination, you'll be well-rewarded. And, if nothing else, you'll know you've been to the movies.

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution