Sensation you get alternates between a dark, eerie dream to a sudden dip The action is frequently slowed down or sometimes sped up, so that the I’ll say one thing about Christophe Gans’s movies: they are fun to watch. (Seen 28 July 2013) Le Pacte des loups (Brotherhood of the Wolf) Instead the story stands on its own and the characters, as played by familiar faces from television, serve the story-instead of the other way around.
The movie actually benefits from not being built around a Willis or a Schwarzenegger or other big star, who would just get in the way of identifying with the characters. But mostly, it’s a heartfelt homage to a former kid’s love of Japanese robot and giant monster movies. In tone, it’s reminiscent of Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers (without being bogged down by that film’s anti-war pretensions), and it captures that feel-good we’re-all-in-this-fight-against-the-aliens-together vibe from Independence Day. I can’t say there are any major surprises in this flick in terms of plot twists or character arcs, but it never feels like it’s going through the motions. They are like super-heroes in a really good comic book or, say, a really good summer action movie. That’s not the same as the characters seeming like real people.
Critics have been praising this summer popcorn movie from Guillermo del Toro for showing how a giant robots-vs.-lizards movie can still make you care about the characters. He is stoic, quietly authoritative, mysterious and a wound-up weapon ready to be released. Castillo on steroids (although I think Castillo would actually be more likely to prefer valium). As played by Elba in this flick, the wonderfully named Stacker Pentecost is basically Lt. Castillo with Idris Elba (of the US’s The Wire and the UK’s Luther). If Michael Mann decides to make another Miami Vice movie, he could not do better than to recast the role of Lt. Sure sign that the filmmakers knew they were dealing with a weak hand: inclusion of lots of clips of much better tear-jerkers (Bette Davis, Judy Garland). Anyway, the book on which this is based had quite a high profile in Ireland since it was authored by Cecelia Aherne, whose dad was the country’s Taoiseach (prime minister) when it came out.
Unfortunately, the beginning, when we finally get to it, wasn’t much more endearing than the ending. The narrative structure is kind of interesting, as the device of the dead husband arranging a year’s worth of letters to be delivered to his widow (kind of creepy, no?) has the effect of telling the story of their romance in reverse. Still, for my money, the Seattle-born Morgan makes a more amiable Irishman than Scotsman Gerard Butler. Anyway, the whole dead-lover-who-won’t-go-away thing was sealed for me when Jeffrey Dean Morgan showed up, since that was his trademark turn on Grey’s Anatomy a couple of seasons ago. But mostly I just found its characters annoying. Chick flick par excellence, maybe this movie moves some to tears.