The Empire of the Wolves
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DVD details
Actor: Arly Jover, Jean Reno, Jocelyn Quivrin, Laura Morante, Philippe BasBrand: COL
DVD: Region Code 99
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language); French (Original Language); English (Dubbed)
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen, 2.35:1
Running Time: 128 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-12-26
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
DVD Reviews of The Empire of the Wolves
DVD Review: Great Fun for Reno Fans! Light on extras.
Summary: 4 Stars
`Empire of the Wolves', a French film directed by Chris Nahon and starring the perennial French film star of choice, Jean Reno is better than several of Reno's films I've seen recently such as `Wasabi' and `The Crimson Rivers', but not nearly as good as his appearances in `La Femme Nikita' or `The Professional'. And yet, his performance in this movie raises the quality of the movie rather than detracting from its reputation. Reno seems to be the French Robert DeNiro, who has appeared in a number of potboilers lately whose primary claim to fame is the fact that DeNiro is the star.
Overall, this is a pretty engaging thriller with a really unusual premise built upon the contemporary concerns about terrorism and interest in medical technology. Similar to `The Crimson Rivers', the movie starts out with two unrelated story lines.
The first story line involves a young woman who, as the film opens, is undergoing an MRI scan to diagnose what seems to be a very odd type of amnesia, where she can't recognize her husband's face. The second story line involves a Paris homicide detective who is working a serial murder case where all the victims are illegally immigrated Turkish girls. The detective captain brings in Reno's character, a forcibly retired specialist in the Turkish quarter of Paris, who left the force in disgrace, stripped of virtually all civic privileges, including his driver's license.
Through the middle of the film, we are treated to Reno's interpretation of the `Dirty Harry' archetype of cop who extracts information from the bad guys in ways that even Clint Eastwood's characters would think twice before trying. Meanwhile, the young woman, played by Arly Jover, is falling ever more deeply into a very shadowy mystery involving her husband and his government colleagues which leads her to escape from their control and merge with Reno's half of the story.
To my taste, there is not quite enough exposition explaining everything that's going on, as if only the thinnest premises are necessary to serve as a framework for well filmed action scenes in unusual venues. And, this movie has its share of unusual venues. In one scene, it seems to borrow a page from the great 1940s film `The Third Man' with its chase of the Orson Wells character through the sewers of Vienna. I have heard a director recently quote Alfred Hitchcock in saying that the audience can endure just so much exposition, so you better get in what you need quickly and succinctly, or you loose the audience. I think either the screenwriter was just a bit too quick and managed to cut out one or two important pieces needed to tie everything together.
The story and the movie are too good for me to spoil it for the future viewer, but I think there are just one too many perps to go around. The list of primary perps includes a Turkish Mafia which seems to have at least two different agendas, one being terror and the other being narcotics smuggling. It also includes the shadowy governmental agency to which main character's (Anna) husband belongs. Finally, it seems the narcotics division of the Paris police are not entirely innocent in these goings on. Last but not least is the French army, allied with the shadowy governmental agency, and involved because of their responsibility for the oversight of all radioactive substances, including those used in medical diagnostics.
There is a sense that the plot was constructed by simply glamming together three or four popular contemporary themes of suspense movies and hoping that a coherent story would emerge. Fortunately, the movie achieves just enough genuine suspense and classic chase scenes and turnabouts to make the movie a pleasure to watch.
One does get the feeling that the film is just a bit overlong, but it does seem to have enough meat to keep us interested for the full two plus hours. Based on my very rudimentary French, I believe the subtitled translation is as good as you will see anywhere, especially since there were no subtlties to deal with as you may find in a Renoir or Truffaut film.
Recommended action flick, a bit weaker than Reno's best, but fun anyway.
Description of The Empire of the Wolves
Synopsis: Jean RenoItem Type: DVD Movie
Item Rating: NR
Street Date: 12/26/05
Wide Screen: yes
Director Cut: no
Special Edition: no
LanguageENGLISH
Foreign Film: no
Subtitlesno
Dubbed: no
Full Frame: no
Re-Release: no
Packaging: Sleeve Please note: This supplier will be closed on 11/24, 11/25, 12/26, 1/2 for the holidays. The shipping cut off is 12/10 to try and have the products delivered by Christmas.
Anna (Arly Jover, Blade) is losing her memory. It started the day she failed to recognize her husband, Laurent (Philippe Bas). "I'm going crazy," she whispers to herself. Then at a dinner party, faces suddenly morph into death masks. Elsewhere in Paris, Captain Nerteaux (Jocelyn Quivrin, Syriana) is trying to catch a serial killer. The three female victims, all Turkish illegals, were tortured and mutilated. Out of desperation, Nerteaux turns to "Shifty" Schiffer (a blond Jean Reno) for help. A brutal cop with ties to the Turkish underworld, Schiffer is easily persuaded. (Too easily, perhaps.) Meanwhile, Anna begins seeing Dr. Mathilde (Laura Morante, The Son's Room). Despite the freaky Francis Bacon painting in her waiting room, which Anna finds terrifying, Mathilde turns out to be a sympathetic psychiatrist who helps unravel the truth about her condition--her face was altered and her memory erased. At the same time, Schiffer helps Nerteaux to solve his mystery. The link between the two is a right-wing organization called the Grey Wolves, which will lead all of them to Turkey for the explosive climax. Empire of the Wolves exerts the same grim fascination as The Crimson Rivers, a previous Jean-Christophe Grangé adaptation featuring Reno. While it marks a minor entry in the versatile actor's career, the gripping (if over-long) thriller ultimately belongs to Jover, whose Anna is as divided against herself as Anne Parillaud's La Femme Nikita. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
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