by Jim Kuipers

Staff Writer

``French action movie'' is not a phrase one often hears. It's practically an oxymoron, in fact. The world usually looks to Hollywood for sabers-and-muskets period adventures and to Hong Kong for outrageous martial arts exploits. Christophe Gans' ``The Brotherhood of the Wolf'' is an anomaly, then, since it is a French movie that offers all of the above, and more.

The year is 1765. The seeds of revolution are spreading, but the monarchy stills reigns supreme. The small province of Gevaudan, however, has fallen under the rule of a very different power: a terrible beast, described as a huge wolf. It prowls the countryside, attacking women and children and evading every attempt to capture or kill it. Even a considerable number of the King's troops have proven ineffective.

Desperate for a solution, the King dispatches Gregoire de Fronsac (Samuel Le Bihan), a naturalist just returned from America, to study the beast. Fronsac travels with a strange companion, Mani (Mark Dacascos). Mani is an Iroquois, skilled in Native American methods of hunting and fighting. Mani is also Fronsac's blood brother. Together they arrive in Gevaudan to pursue the beast, only to discover that the beast isn't Gevaudan's only mystery.

Technically, the film is stunning. The production design is impressive to say the least. Every setting breathes with a life of its own. The palatial residence of the Comte de Morangias is the picture of eighteenth-century opulence, while deep in the forest, overgrown with vegetation, a ruined Templar chapel broods over its ancient tragedy. Every facet of the filmmaking craft--acting, music, editing and so on--achieves this same level of excellence.

These combined elements lift the film from the ranks of garden-variety action thriller into a work of grace and power. Take, for example, Fronsac and Mani's arrival in Gevaudan. At this point the film has not introduced them to the audience. They appear on horseback, unknown figures crossing a wide, green field. Tri-cornered hats, overcoats and tall collars protect the pair from the cheerless rain, obscuring their faces. They seem inhuman as they encounter a gang of thugs assaulting an old man and his daughter. The thugs pause in apprehension of the otherworldly figures, as one dismounts and approaches them. The thugs insist the old man robbed them; the old man insists the thugs owe him for caring for their horses. The figure on horseback orders the thugs to leave, and they in turn respond by advancing menacingly on the unknown figure on foot. They surround him, and attack. Alternately fast and slow camera speeds allow time to slow in anticipation of each blow, then speed up as the unknown sends each thug reeling. The camera slows in the aftermath as well, lingering on the thugs as they extract themselves from the muddy earth. Having proven their mastery of the situation, the unknowns give the thugs' money to the old man.

Such manipulation of reality produces a very opaque, yet wonderfully expressive film style. The film abuses (as many action films do) the eight-bad-guys-to-one-good-guy scenario, yet the presentation is so impressive that this cinematic cliché can be easily forgiven. Hong Kong should take notes.

Action is hardly the extent of the film's expressive ability. It triumphs in the creation of a wide range of moods. Mystery, terror, tension, passion, and romance ensnare the viewer as well, producing turbulent seas of emotion. Each wave carries the viewer to dizzy heights, only to cast him/her down into the deepest troughs minutes later.

``The Brotherhood of the Wolf'' has only one serious failing, but it affects the entire film: it has a nearly unintelligible narrative, full of unnecessary scenes, distracting emphasis on unimportant characters, and baffling plot and character reversals. The emergence of not one, but two secret societies complicates matters to a confusing degree. Fronsac's visits to the village brothel are not only gratuitously explicit, but their very presence in the film is pointless. The aforementioned old man's daughter receives great attention, apparently for the sole purpose of distracting the viewer from other characters.

By virtue of the setting--1700s France--the film cannot avoid the prominence of Christianity in that time and place. Nor can it avoid the Church's age-old struggle with secular government for power. As it progresses, however, it injects any number of additional belief systems, including the occult, occultic Christian sects, Native American mysticism, and maybe even more. These conflicting structures interact in a very disorganized fashion as the film mixes and matches them to suit its needs. Agents of the Pope and agents of the King wage secret war for control of the nation--secret, even from the audience. Characters who seem evil turn out to be good, and vice versa. They convert and revert and transform at random to serve the action dimension of the film. The resulting mishmash is simply indecipherable.

``The Brotherhood of the Wolf'' is indeed an anomaly. Very rarely does a film exist simultaneously as such a brilliant success and such a dismal failure. It tells its story exceedingly well; unfortunately, that story is incoherent. The result is two and a half hours of gibberish. But it is beautiful gibberish.