reviews

Los Angeles playwright Peter McGowan (Kenneth Branagh: Love’s Labour’s Lost) doesn’t really want to kill his neighbor’s dog — he’s a suburban terrorist only in his cynical writer’s imagination. And he’s not even the misanthrope he’d like to think he is, either. Nobody does cranky better than Branagh, especially when he’s thawing into the warm … more…

Will Landon fall in love with her? Will she reveal her deep, dark secret, the one we’d guessed from the beginning but at which we will still howl with derisive laughter when she does? Will the audience survive the movie without their sides splitting? I think you already know the answers.

The key thing to remember when you’re adapting a classic novel for Hollywood is this: Take any moral complexities, any shades of gray, and make ’em black or white. You don’t want to make anyone think, after all, or make anyone uncomfortable. This is Entertainment. Fer gawd’s sake, don’t tax your audience.

With no sense of irony, no concept of subtext, nothing at all going on behind that pretty face, Gere lets his jutting square-jawness and blinking dumbfoundment stand in for Klein’s supposed grief-stricken anguish and In Search Of… befuddlement.

It’s an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink flick, is Brotherhood of the Wolf — director Christophe Gans and his co-screenwriter Stephane Cabel are clearly fans of American television, of Hollywood films, of Hong Kong martial arts, of classic pulp literature, and they throw a bit of it all into this horror-action-costume drama. And damn if it doesn’t work.

If you’re like me, then you probably just can’t stand the crap that passes for “entertainment for men.” You know, the kind of sappy, melodramatic junk that Lifetime for Men airs: movies about soccer dads in jeopardy, usually called things like Oh Dear God No Not My Baby!, horrible, trite stories about dads who triumph over a cold, harsh, unsympathetic world, and become better people and — more importantly — better dads in the process.

Need I say they fall in love? Within a matter of days? She should be worse, to his eyes, than the boorish women his uncle wants him to marry. He should be worse, to her eyes, than the unconventional Stuart she can’t abide. And abysmal lack of chemistry between Ryan and Jackman is embarrassing: they share the least romantic screen kiss I’ve ever seen. You can practically see them thinking, ‘Oh, well, it’s a paycheck.’