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It's a sad day when France bests Hollywood in the action/fantasy film sweepstakes...

Sure, France has given the world great filmmakers over the years, from Jean Renoir, Francois Truffaut, and Jean-Luc Godard to Luc Besson, but we're discussing the action genre, the home turf of Hollywood, John McTiernan, James Cameron, and Clint Eastwood!

Yet there's been no mistake.

Hollywood has been handed its hat and robbed of its Gold Medal in action. Le Pacte des Loups (The Brotherhood of the Wolf), a movie from director Christophe Gans, is a new high-water mark in the cinema of over-the-top adventure. An overwrought and fiendishly intriguing period piece of conspiracies, bloody horror, martial arts action, and stirring romance, The Brotherhood of the Wolf is an amazing synthesis of diverse genre elements. And, unbelievably, the story and characters are handled with a care and wit far surpassing Hollywood's take on similar material.

Let's face facts. Sometime in the last decade, probably with the dead-on-arrival premiere of the dreadful Speed 2, mainstream Hollywood genre films began to...disappoint. Weren't we all disappointed/angered/disgusted or otherwise unhappy with Batman and Robin(1997), Alien Resurrection (1997), Starship Troopers (1997), Lost in Space (1998), Godzilla (1998), Star Trek: Insurrection (1998), Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace (1999), The Wild, Wild West (1999), The Mummy (1999), Charlie's Angels (2000), Red Planet (2001), Mission to Mars (2001), Tomb Raider (2001), The Mummy Returns (2001), Planet of the Apes (2001), Rollerball (2002), or other heavily-hyped product originating from the entertainment capital of the world?

Sure, The Matrix (1999) was fantastic and highly imaginative, and many audiences thought Pitch Black (2000) was a treasure too, but name one (or maybe two...) Hollywood action adventures from 1997 - 2002 that left you feeling totally satisfied. Not thrashed. Not awed by special effects. But satisfied in pure human terms; that you'd seen a captivating story, with interesting and unique characters, well told.

Come to think of it, the last action film that succeeded on those grounds was Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). Guess where that film wasn't made...

So along comes Christophe Gans with co-writer Stephane Cabel to create a French masterpiece called The Brotherhood of the Wolf. It's the kind of robust, enthralling action-adventure James Cameron, Steven Spielberg and John Carpenter were once so adept at assembling. The film's story, supposedly based on a "real" event in French history, opens in 18th century France as a rakish naturalist named Fronsac (actor Samuel Le Bihan) and his Native-American "brother" Mani (Mark Dacascos of the cancelled TV series Crow: Stairway to Heaven) are sent to the remote province of Gevaudan to stop a mysterious "beast" that has been slaughtering women and children. Once the hunt is on, Fronsac and Mani realize their opponent is no ordinary animal, but a terrible, bloodthirsty creature, possibly of supernatural origin. All attempts to stop the beast's reign of terror are unsuccessful, and the people of Gevaudan seem to know more about its origin than they let on. As the mystery of the beast deepens, Fronsac comes to suspect that the one-handed brother (Vincent Cassel) of a beautiful countess (Emilie Dequenne) may be involved in a strange conspiracy.

To reveal any more of the tale would rob the film of its many surprises. Suffice it to say that Brotherhood of the Wolf has more twists and turns than your average roller coaster. Delightfully, those surprises arise not from miserable and cliched contrivances (like a destructive 21st century robot in an ancient crypt in a training exercise in a British castle in Tomb Raider...), but from period politics, human interaction, and well-placed clues about character motivation.

Before The Brotherhood of the Wolf has finished its 142 minute running time, audiences have much to ponder, including class warfare (involving the French Revolution...), animal rights (in the treatment of the beast...), racism (seen in the aristocracy's disdain of Mani, an Iroquois "savage"...), women's rights, the role of the Church, the place for a free press in a monarchy, and much, much more. Dense is probably a good word to use here. Finally, after years of brain dead garbage, this is an action movie that engages the mind and asks audiences to sit up and pay attention. Watching The Brotherhood of the Wolf is no passive experience for viewers who want to coast through their entertainment. Watching it is an active, stimulating process. In many ways, it reminded me of The Blair Witch Project because it seeks to engage the imagination rather than provide easy, pat answers to situations. Unlike The Blair Witch Project, however, this film has lavish production values and the mysterious beast is finally revealed in all its remarkable, special effects glory.

But we don't go to action movies just to think. We go to see involving characters drawn into dangerous feats of derring-do. And The Brotherhood of the Wolf also provides that in spades. The martial-arts action sequences, often filmed in splattering mud like a battle sequence out of Gladiator (2000), are as exciting and dramatic as any yet put to film, and the lithe Dacascos moves with an amazing grace. In the final portion of the film, when Le Bihan's Fronsac is driven to battle, he also becomes a highly effective avenging angel of death, and bones crack with all the requisite snap we expect in these kind of adventures. Take that, Steven Seagal!

Perhaps more significantly, The Brotherhood of the Wolf also gives the world a terrifying villain in its "beast." More destructive than the shark in Jaws, more elusive than the Invisible Man, and ultimately more pitiable than Darth Vader, this strange creature is not seen for the film's first hour, and the suspense generated around its presence is quite considerable. The film opens with a young maiden under attack by the beast, a graphic, bloody sequence of high intensity, and yet the creature is never even glimpsed. It's only the first of several beautifully executed horror sequences. Another set-piece, involving a maiden and a little lamb trapped at the bottom of a muddy, leaf-covered pond, rivals scenes in big-budget animal attack films as diverse as Deep Blue Sea (1999), The Ghost and the Darkness (1996), and the Jurassic Parkventures.

The Brotherhood of the Wolf might also be interpreted as a sort of master's thesis "homage" to a dozen or more popular action films. One section of the film, involving the trapping of the beast, clearly evokes Arnie's 1987 opus Predator. Other sections are reminiscent of the aforementioned Jaws. And, for fans of 1970s British horror, Gans's film also calls up memories of obscure favorites like Piers Haggard's Blood on Satan's Claw (1971) and Hammer's Demons of the Mind (1972). Despite such diverse influences, the film never feels overtly imitative. It merely quotes from popular movie images and then re-casts them in new and often exciting light. The word "post-modern" is one that gets overused by pretentious critics. But in making a martial-arts, horror romance fantasy, the film is indeed post-modern, separating out interesting ideas from their original context and landing them in, of all places, pre-Revolution France. In other words, martial arts abilities are cut-out out of their own genre and origination (in Asia) to serve as part of the "savage" backdrop for Mani's Native American character. This is important because these fighting abilities help define Mani as different than the staid, Old World Westerners of France. It's an interesting conceit, and just one more flight of imagination in the film.

The Brotherhood of the Wolf is a film that won't be enjoyed by everybody. It is a long movie that requires a little knowledge of history and some patience. And, of course, it is sub-titled for English audiences. But as it hops playfully and coherently from one element of the action-fantasy genre to the other, The Brotherhood of the Wolf confidently reveals just how empty and stupid the Tomb Raiders of the world truly are. This movie has more intelligence behind it than any ten Hollywood action adventures you can name, and that alone makes it worthy of attention. It also happens to be jam-packed with rousing adventure and action set pieces, gorgeous women, graphic and disgusting gore, and colorful, awe-inspiring natural settings.

Trust me, you've never seen anything quite like it...