Brotherhood of the Wolf

In the 1760s a creature is killing hundreds of people in the Gévaudan region. The king sends the naturalist Grégoire de Fronsac and his Iroquois companion Mani to investigate. Christophe Gans put period drama and martial arts in the same film. Mani's fight sequences, with Mark Dacascos, are the most praised thing in it. On the identity of the beast the film departs from the real Gévaudan legend: what emerges is neither a wolf nor an unknown animal but an armoured lion trained by a deranged nobleman. On a 29 million dollar budget it grossed around 70.8 million worldwide, becoming France's biggest hit of 2001 and the sixth highest-grossing French-language film ever released in the United States. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 72 percent. One critic's summary captures it: it mixes its genres with little logic, and the end result is wildly entertaining. Who it is for: viewers untroubled by genre collision who like period action. Who it is not for: anyone wanting coherence. It runs 152 minutes and moves between gothic horror and Hong Kong fighting with no transition at all.