Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001)

[Drunk Monk]

He first caught my attention with Brotherhood of the Wolf. I should revisit that. It was groundbreaking back in the day but now I wonder if it holds up. 

This holds up surprisingly well. I remembered very little of it beyond that it was cool to see Kung Fu style fight choreo in this period action horror. Having hapa Dacascos play a native wouldn’t do today - his character is the mystical noble savage cliche, but he carries it with such class. It’s arguably his best role.

There’s also a wolf hunt that looks too real to not be. That’s hard to overlook.

The story is dense - lots of stuff going on but somehow it all works. The lead Samuel Le Bihan put out some distracting David Lee Roth vibes. Monica Belluci is stunning as the courtesan spy. Being shot on location in France helps too.

The fight choreo barely holds up by today’s standard but is still good for the day. Dacascos has precise kicks and shows them well. He outclasses everyone else. There’s a lot of spin and hook kicks sealing the martial deal. In the finale fight, the bone sword chain whip was imaginative but the cgi to achieve it was weak. And how many times can you get away with the crossed twin swords block? I was very amused with the last one when the villain uses it to draw the hero’s guard up opening a shot to his belly. 

It’s over two hours and there’s an even longer director’s cut. Some of that could’ve been easily trimmed and tightened. I felt many of the tension building scenes went on too long but that’s my current TikTok attention span. 

D00M recommended.

Seen on freevee AP, so there were commercials. Also, only the English dub was available, and I woi have much preferred to see it in the original French.