Westender

Apparently the road to redemption requires a lot of walking. In the literal sense. The movie, Westender, follows one 'Asbrey of Westender', a famous former knight (I know neither why he is famous or former) as he tries to recover the ring of some dead woman (I know neither her relation to Asbrey, or why she was burned) which he lost gambling (while drunk). Oops. Theres a catch, however, as the ring is in the hands of a group of slavers. Queue epic action packed adventure. Or a lot of walking in silence, that works, too. I mean a lot of walking in silence. The man walks through the forest, over two mountains, and across a desert without uttering a single word beyond repeatedly screaming "take me" during a flashback sequence when the desert drives him mad.

The movie isn't bad, in spite of all the walking. Absolutely gorgeous scenery and some excellent acting are the films saving graces. I was delighted to see a scene where a pivotal question is posed and answered entirely without dialogue near the end. Capture the villain, or protect the innocent and lose the villain permanently? Many films would have two characters spelling the question out for the audience. One screaming about how the villain is getting away, the other pleading for protection. Westender cuts between shots of the last slaver as he flees into the distance with the ring, two cloaked men watching from a nearby hill, and the mute face of one of the slaves Asbrey had just freed. Shots of Asbrey twisting in his saddle to look both ways highlight his inner struggle. Much better than the screaming.

Dragon Wars

Dragon Wars struck me as something SciFi Channel Original Pictures would make if they had the money. The story is bad - a girl is born with some Heavenly MacGuffin in her, the chosen one must protect her until she comes of age at which point she is to sacrificed, only the two fall in love and their reincarnations get to try again 500 years later - and about half of the dialog is prefaced by some variation on "You're going to think I'm crazy, but." And neither the LAPD nor the FBI is capable of tracking a 200m long serpent as it rampages through downtown LA. No one believes the night watchman and thinks his story about the serpent eating all the elephants in the zoo makes him insane, prompting me to wonder how he's the only one who noticed that the elephants weren't there anymore.

So where did the budget go, if the story and script are abysmal? Quite simply, Dragon Wars is special effects porn. A scene devoted to showing off an immense battle for downtown between the evil serpent with it's army of dragons, dinosaurs, giant toadlike creatures, and faceless minions and the US military lasts around 10 minutes. It does absolutely nothing to advance the plot, but is a lot more fun to watch, so I've got no complaints about it taking up more than 10% of the total runtime.

Brotherhood of the Wolf

It has been a long and painful journey, but I have finally managed to locate a French film which, instead of making me regret my choice of major, I actually enjoyed. That film is Le Pacte des Loups, or Brotherhood of the Wolf.

I've long counted cryptozoology among my interests and have been a fan of both the martial arts and monster movie genres for as long as I can remember. Brotherhood of the Wolf is a wonderful mix of all three, and yet manages to avoid being cheesy. Not even the scene where an immense, armored, and CGI-rendered beast is chased through the French countryside by an Iroquois with extensive knowledge of kung-fu is cheesy.

The film doesn't put forth a serious explanation for what the beast of Gévaudan really was, instead option for a variation on the conspiracy theories surrounding Jean Chastel, who historically killed the second, and last, beast believed to have been responsible for the killings. I can hardly fault the filmmakers here; having the beast be a particularly large and agressive wolf would be anticlimactic and make for an absolutely horrible vehicle for any message.