"Wolf" in Chic Clothing

Boy, for a country that looks down on Americans, France sure does seem to want to make an American film. The trailer for Christophe Gans' "Brotherhood of the Wolf" promised a sweeping, cinematic mélange of kung fu and corsets set against the hunt for a mysterious, murdering monster that may or may not be a wolf. What plays out in the film however shows that the French have as much of a gift for derivative storytelling as any nation. What would you say about a movie that starts out with a lone woman being killed by an unseen beast that tosses her around like a rag doll, then proceeds to introduce the characters of a small town bent on destroying the monster, only to culminate in a three man hunt for the beast? Does it sound a little, as the French might say, Jaws-esque?

Saying that "Brotherhood" is the highest grossing French film of all time is like saying it's the cleanest toilet in Penn Station, but this film has all the earmarks of a wannabe crowd-pleaser: in the Bruce Willis role it has the decidedly un-French Samuel Le Bihan (who looks like Christopher Lambert by way of David Lee Roth); the film also throws in a mysterious Iroquois sidekick in Hawaiian-born martial artist Mark Dacascos; there's the Sophie Marceau-ish femme fatale played by Italian beauty Monica Bellucci; and even a fey villain that Alan Cumming would kill to play courtesy of Vincent Cassel.

With all the subtlety of a baguette in the face, damsel after damsel is brutalized by a hidden beast whose every breath and movement shakes the theater. When the creature is finally revealed, of course, it's something of a letdown (apparently CGI technology in France is also somewhat behind the times). The faceless bad guys who populate the French countryside continually get their butts frappéd by the charismatic Mr. Dacascos, and they never seem to learn when they constantly surround him that they should attack all at once instead of one at a time.

Mr. Gans, who co-wrote as well as directed, has a flair for storytelling, though his insistence on over-using John Woo-style slow motion interferes with the film's pacing one too many times. If we are witnessing a renaissance in French cinema here, then the Americanization of Europe might finally be complete. This is not necessarily a good thing.