Stealth Entertainment
By Scott Lumley
July 3, 2008
There is some dialogue and back and forth play here and other characters get introduced. Jean Francois limps into the picture, his arm hidden as he nurses an injury he received while travelling in Africa. His sister accompanies him as well and dotes on him while trying not to drool over Gregoire and the loincloth wearing Mani.
Palace intrigue and backroom politics fly into the plot, the army is dispatched to kill this thing dead and they proceed to slaughter a pile of wolves, none of which are obviously the killer. The general in charge of the army proclaims that the beast is slain and there is much rejoicing. Gregoire protests this, as the bites marks on the victims are much, much larger than anything the soldiers killed. Gregoire is quite effectively told to shut his trap and play along as the King needs the problem solved now. So Gregoire dutifully takes the carcasses of the slain Wolves and creates a stuffed Monster out of them. Once he has convinced the populace that the beast is dead, he's dispatched back to the area to actually kill the beast.
From there, the plot gets even weirder. Gregoire discovers a small cultish group dedicated to the overthrow of the king. They appear to be involved somehow with the beast, and they have also insinuated themselves into the local authorities as well. Gregoire and Mani go on a raid of their hideout, but get separated and Mani is killed.
Gregoire is saddened, no closer to figuring out what beast is doing all the damage and suddenly gets jailed for no reason that I could decipher. Apparently it's treason, but I'm unclear on how exactly it would be treason as he's doing EXACTLY what the King told him to. It's ultimately irrelevant, as shortly after he is incarcerated and awaiting trial, he gasps and dies a painful death from poison.
Except he's not actually dead. Sylvia, Gregoire's prostitute/spy friend - who appears naked several times in the film, by the way - just drugged him to make him look dead so she could smuggle his "corpse" out of prison. Gregoire's condition gets upgraded to not dead, he spends a moment recovering and then gets his sword and charges off to battle the bad guys that framed him.
This is where things get truly weird. There's a huge battle between Gregoire and the cult and it's about as lopsided as it can possibly be as Gregoire plays Cuisinart with them. He slices, he dices, he crushes rebellion, and truly he is a talented man. Gegoire's onslaught is halted by the leader of the cult, who is wielding an elongating bone whip/sword that he flails around like a kung fu master. No, I'm not making that up. He has a bone whipsword that grows and shrinks as he needs it to. It's couldn't have been any weirder if he'd pulled out a lightsaber or a chainsaw.
At any rate, Brotherhood of the Wolf is possibly one of the most unique films I have ever seen. On one hand, the plot is not so much complex as it is impenetrable. Additionally, the ending is completely against the grain of the whole film, and actually borders on the absurd. On the other, it has the Chairman in a loincloth and Monica Bellucci naked a lot. I'll leave it up to you to decide what's more important here.
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