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Mark Dacascos in
Brotherhood of the Wolf
original title: Pacte des Loups
You can jump directly to these sections :
The story , Behind the camera , Premiere , Subtitles , The Actors , The Director , The Illustrator , Gallery ,
04 January 2007
The Story
Pacte takes place in France in 1766, and is based on a true story. The "Beast of Gevaudan" is France's equivalent to the Loch Ness monster, and it killed more than one hundred women and children in Southern France - but no males above the age of sixteen.In the movie, the French king sends Chevalier Grégoire De Fronsac, who is a an explorer, a biologist, an artist, a taxidermist and philosopher to Gevaudan to draw the animal and prepare it once it's been caught and killed. Fronsac is accompanied by his bloodbrother, Mani, a Mohawk Indian, played by Mark Dacascos.
Fronsac met Mani when he was in America during the Indian Wars. Fronsac and Mani lodge with local nobleman D'Apcher, and his grandson Thomas guides them around the area - both out- and indoors.
Fronsac falls in love with young noblewoman Marianne de Morangias, but still he can't keep away from the mysterious courtesan Sylvia - who may be more than she seems .....
Fronsac has to fight not only the beast, but also ignorance, blind faith and conspiracies.
Behind the camera
The movie is directed by Christophe Gans. He's a big fan of Hong Kong action movies and John Woo is obviously one of his idols. Gans chose Danish cinematographer Dan Laustsen to film the movie after seeing his work in Mimic and Nightwatch.Visit my Dan Laustsen website to see a few of his behind-the-scenes photos.
The technical crew for the movie consisted of more than 200 people!
Premiere
Pacte premiered in France on January 31, 2001.It has since been shown in many different countries - in the beginning mainly French-speaking countries and on film festivals, but during the autumn 2001, it opened in many more countries. England was October 19th, but it seems to have been a limited release.
For a while, it was uncertain whether the movie would be shown in America, but fortunately, it was not doomed to the same fate as GAns's and Dacascos's previous collaboration, Crying Freeman, and premiered in the US January 11, 2002.
Subtitles, synchronized or?
At one point, there were rumors that the movie was being made in both French and English, But that rumor was untrue.Another rumor was that it was going to be dubbed using CGI, but that would have been prohibitively expensive - also false.
In the cinemas, Pacte turned up in its original language with subtitles most places, except the countries where movies are usually dubbed - like Italy and Germany.
For the DVD, some countries got a subtitled version, others got a dubbed version and the lucky ones got a dual-language disc.
It was probably thanks to the succes of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" that Universal decided to show an action movie with subtitles.
Perhaps thanks are also due Jean Reno. His success in the US may have lured some American fans into seeing Les Rivières Pourpres (Crimson Rivers) with subtitles.
The six Leads
Mark Dacascos (Mani) -had a different time from the other actors. He could really understand Mani's "fish out of water" feeling since he himself was experiencing much the same - being the only American actor in the group. Also, while the rest of the actors could take off their costumes, make-up and wigs and be themselves over the weekend, Mark had his eyebrows shaved somewhat and didn't use a wig, but hair extensions, and had his tattoos touched up over the weekend, so Mark REALLY lived with his role for six months.
Samuel Le Bihan (Grégoire de Fronsac) - known from among others "Three Colors: Red", Captain Conan and Venus Beauty Institute. He can play the charming fool and the menacing tough guy equally well.
Gans considers him a candidate for new French action hero.
Born in 1965.
More details about his movies on IMDB .
Fansite: Dolores' SLB site - in English.
Vincent Cassel (Jean-Francois de Morangias) -
known from playing the lead in Crimson Rivers with Jean Reno. He was also the lead in Hate (La Haine,1995) og Dobermann(1996).
He was also the voice of Monsieur Hood in Shrek.
Born 23 November 1966 in Paris.
More details about his movies on IMDB .
Official Vincent Cassel website.
Fansite: Le Site de Vincent Cassel
Monica Bellucci (Sylvia) -
In real life, she's married to Cassel and has been in several films with him, among others Dobermann and L'Appartement. Other movies you might have seen her in:
Malèna, and Passions of the Christ, playing Magdalen. In Bram Stoker's Dracula(1991), she played one of the three brides of Dracula. She was also Cleopatra in the Asterix movie and Persephone in Matrix 2, The Matrix Reloaded.
Born 30 September 1968 in Citta di Castello Perugia, Italy.
More details about her movies on IMDB .
Fansite: Monica-Bellucci.net
Find more fansites on the "Miscellaneous Links"-page on IMDB
Jérémie Rénier (the young Thomas D'Apcher) -
has been in a lot of films, but then, he started at the tender age of ten. He got his break in La Promesse, and among others, he's made Les Amants Criminels and Le Pornographe.
He was born in Brussels, Belgium, January 6, 1981.
More details about his movies on IMDB .
Official Jérémie Rénier Site.
Fansite
Emilie Dequenne (Marianne) -
won gold palms for best female role at Cannes in 1999 for her role in Rosetta. For Rosetta, she also won the CFCA and the Joseph Plateau award and was nominated for the Cécar and the European film award .
Born 29 august, 1981 in Beloeil, Belgium.
More details about her movies on IMDB .
Fansite: Emilie Dequenne
The Director
Christophe Gans is a movie aficionado, and he started his own movie magazine, Starfix, which he led for several years. In 1993 he made a third of the movie Necronomicon, the segment called 'The Drowned'.In 1995 he made Crying Freeman with Mark. It's rumored that Jason Scott Lee was to be Yo, but fortunately, Mark ended up getting the role.
Gans had worked a long time on his Nemo project, "Twenty thousand leagues below the sea", and had scouted locations in New Orleans and on Hawaii, but the producers didn't like the guy he wanted for Nemo, so in the end, the project fell through. One rumor has it that Gans wanted Russell Crowe, who was not so famous before Gladiator came out - another one has Billy Crudup up - or rather - down - for the role of the captain.
So when CanalPlus offered him "Le Pacte des Loups" with a script by Stephane Cabel, he happily threw himself into a new project.
Originally, the script did not contain an Indian, but Gans added that character.
About Pacte, Gans has said that he made a movie he would have loved to see when he was thirteen.
His mission is to entertain, and some of his influences are John Woo (he used Philip Kwok, who has worked for Woo as his fight choreographer for Pacte, as well as Woo's editor, David Wu) , computer games, the old Angelique movies and manga. He calls his movie a mix of thriller, philosophical tale, historical drama, swordfighting movie and spaghetti western, and he likes to make multi-ethnic movies.
He has repeatedly said that Mark is the perfect embodiment of his movies: an ethnic hero, elegant, exotic, with a dreamlike quality.
The Illustrator
Mathieu Lauffray also worked with Gans on the Nemo project. In his own right, he's a well-known illustrator of covers for Star Wars books, comics and he's made some comics albums himself. In the movie, Fronsac's sketches and water colors were made by Lauffray. Here are a few more examples of Lauffray's work .Gallery
