Reviews (332)

Brotherhood Of the Wolf-A Masterwork of Period Horror
Director Christopher Gans (Crying Freeman, Necronomicon)has adapted the 300 year old case of the Beast of Gevaudon into the absolutely brilliant BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF (Le Pacte De Loups). Samuel Le Bihan stars as King Louis the XV's chief naturalist, war veteren Gregoire De Fronsac, sent to the French countryside with his best friend, a Native American warrior named Mani (Marc DeCascos)to hunt and kill a wolf-like "beast" responsible for a series of bloody deaths. Along the way, they encounter political intrigue, a witchy courtisan (the stunning Monica Belucchi) and the Beast itself, with amazing results.
Although compared to The Matrix, Crouching Tiger and Jaws, I found this breathtaking film more in the vein of Tsui Hark's Once Upon a Time in China series, with a dose of Dragonslayer thrown in for good measure. Complete with amazing locations, spot-on costumes and butt-kicking Savate sequences courtesy of DeCascos, Le Bihan and the menacing Vincent Cassel (The Crimson Rivers), BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF was well worth the year's wait (it was released in France in January of 2001). By all means, treat yourself to this truly ORIGINAL film. Within five minutes, you'll forget the subtitles, drawn in by the film's voluptuous beauty and thrilling plot twists.

Magnificent folly, way ahead of its time
BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF (Le Pacte des Loups, 2001): In 18th century France, a brave young naturalist (Samuel Le Bihan [TROIS COULEURS ROUGE]) and his Native American companion (Mark Dacascos [DRIVE]) are hired to trace the origins of a bloodthirsty 'beast' which has been terrorizing the countryside, killing women and children. But their investigations uncover an appalling conspiracy which cuts to the very heart of French high society...

Loosely based on true events, this high-powered Gallic blockbuster - directed by Christophe Gans, hired on the strength of his incredible genre-bending adaptation of CRYING FREEEMAN - wowed French audiences when released in 2001. And no wonder! A high-kicking combination of horror movie, period drama, political thriller and 'Matrix'-inspired kung fu pageant, the film combines the best elements of these disparate sub-genres in a dazzling display of technical wizardry. Photographed in widescreen Super 35 by Dan Laustsen (MIMIC, THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN), and played with solemn conviction by an all-star cast - including relative newcomers Vincent Cassel (LA HAINE), Monica Bellucci (the MATRIX sequels) and Jeremie Renier (LES AMANTS CRIMINELS), and veterans Jean Yanne (most recently seen in BELLE MAMAN) and Edith Scob (the elegant heroine of Franju's LES YEUX SANS VISAGE) - the movie is a riot of action and intrigue, sustained by a multilayered screenplay (co-authored by Gans and Stephane Cabel) which recounts an elaborate fable of class warfare and religious bigotry during a grim period of French history. The fight scenes - choreographed with ruthless efficiency by Hong Kong movie veteran Phillip Kwok (MASTER OF THE FLYING GUILLOTINE, HARD-BOILED, TOMORROW NEVER DIES, etc.) - are fashioned with elegant grace, and edited to perfection by Sebastien Prangere and David Wu Dai-wai (another prominent HK movie figure, Ronny Yu Yan-tai's current editor of choice). Much of the film's otherworldly visual texture is due to the sumptuous art direction (by Guy-Claude Francois [JEFFERSON IN PARIS]) and costume design (by Dominique Borg), which roots proceedings in a recognizable period 'style', despite Gans' resolutely modern approach to the material. It shouldn't work, but it does, somehow. The 'explanation' for the beast and its murderous activities - which takes into account a wide range of modern research into the story of an animal which really DID terrorize the French countryside during the 18th century - forms the backbone of the entire production, and while much of the film is a rip-roaring joy, the climactic sequences are offset by an element of tragedy and sadness, which thoroughly distinguishes the movie from most of its Hollywood counterparts. All in all, BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF is a magnificent folly, way ahead of its time, and quite unlike anything ever made before.

This review is based on a viewing of the Canadian disc from TVR Films which presents the original French version in its entirety (the international version, including the one released in the US and UK, appears to be shorter by about 10 minutes) and runs 150m 34s, minus the logos which open the video print and weren't part of the original production, and letterboxes the scope frame at 2.35:1 (anamorphically enhanced). The US disc - a region 1 release from Universal - is a no-frills affair which features a letterboxed anamorphic version of the shorter print, and some reviews suggest it's a better-looking transfer than the one featured on the Canadian disc. Captions and subtitles are provided. The Canadian version, however, is a 3-disc spectacular, and features (amongst many other things) an extremely frank documentary on the making of the film which opens with an actress being clobbered during an accident on-set, and proceeds to outline the various obstacles which constantly threatened the production schedule (not least the unpredictable weather during location shooting) and ultimately strained relations between director Gans and co-producer Samuel Hadida. That such a remarkable film emerged from these traumatic circumstances says much about the talent and dedication of these extraordinary gentlemen and all those who helped bring their unique vision to the silver screen. A triumph.

terrible!
i am completely amazed as i read the other reviews of this movie and have to wonder if we saw the same film.
did we?
a movie with no characterization? terrible dialogue? a lot of slow-motion action sequences (trying desperately to copy the John Woo style)? a lot of style and glitz but no plot motivation to back it up? and a SUPER hokey ending?
and don't even get me started on the character of Mani. i'm from the region Mani is said to come from, and all of the displays of Native American traditions which are presented in this film are fabricated and presented to the point that i was insulted!

did we see the same movie?
this is a good movie for cutiosity sake but little else.

Regarding the Beast
From the outset of Le Pacte de Loups, we know that the central beast of the movie is no ordinary wolf. Regarding its identification, however - a point that is never truly elucidated whether you've seen the film or not - there remains debate. My initial and superseding question is, no matter how the beast appears, what makes it impossible to believe in the beast's specificity as a common French wolf? This fact is unmistakable to my intuitions. Many of you might not know French, but I looked it up and "loup" is actually French for "wolf" - not "beast," like many appear to think. First point, the movie title states this so-called mysterious answer from the outset. If the beast was a hyena, the French would be referring to "hyènes," and were it a lion, it would actually be called "lion" (the two languages share this word).

If you need more evidence, there is no lack in the film. Our beast is often seen running with its pack, howling at the moon, and killing people. While Grégoire attempts to denounce the belief in human murders by wolf, one of the final scenes of the movie clearly depicts wolves doing just that: an obvious statement to disaffirm his slander. If you listen to the revealing narrative at the end of the film, it is stated that while visiting Africa Jean-François found the beast and raised her offspring, selecting the largest and strongest to take back with him to France and training it to be more ferocious and cruel than the average wolf.

***WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD.
Earlier we learn that this character has been savaged by a lion, which resulted in the loss of his right forelimb. Would you take the same animal that disfigured you and raise it as your own? Neither would Jean-François.

I had to chuckle at some of these reviews!
Wow! Four out of five. Three out of five. You have to be joking don't you? This movie is perfection. Pure, true, honest, stylish. Of course Americans get a bit ruffled when a 'foreign' film shows the good old US of A how 'it's done' yet again. You folk like you're movies with justification, explanation and gradification... all tied up in a bow. This movie is not sugar covered and goes in depth within (I won't give it away for those that have not seen it) an area that goes way back in time and is still happening today (Bohemiam Grove hint hint etc)which has always fascinated me. So why would you not like it? Firstly that pesky 'other' language (yes, it's in French - and so it should be) makes those of less IQ's have to read. Pesky pesky. Secondly it has many layers as a movie and does not always have to explain EVERYTHING that is going on, and instead relies on the intellect of it's viewers and allows us to progress on the journey and make up our own minds as to how, why and who. I will not go into 'explaining' the film as it is done already in the top review and you all seem to explain it over and over again. I am not French as you may all think, and instead an Aussie relieved and satisfied that a certain standard of perfection is retained in some movies in the world. Erotic, scary, action, suspense, intelligent, beautiful. Simply one of the best movies I have seen this year. (I'll put money on it that America will remake this movie very soon... and yet again bugger up another classic foreign film that should have been left well alone! Please don't! I beg you!) ... Read more

Reviews (26)

Superb anime version of solid crime-themed Japanese manga
CRYING FREEMAN: PORTRAIT OF A KILLER (1988) is the first of six Japanese anime volumes based on the manga (comic book) by Kazuo Koike and Ryoichi Ikegami about a handsome young sculptor who is forcibly recruited by the 108 Dragons, an ancient organization of Chinese assassins. We see him trained as an assassin and programmed to kill on their orders. His uncontrolled stream of tears after each killing and his yearning to be free give him the name, Crying Freeman.

Things get complicated when Freeman is forced to undertake the elimination of a witness to one of his killings. She is a beautiful, lonely, single Japanese woman and, like Freeman, an accomplished artist. They recognize each other as soul mates and he risks his life'and hers'to convince the organization of her value to him.

This 52-minute animated production is almost a perfect adaptation of the manga story and stands out as the best of the CRYING FREEMAN animated series. The dramatic mood and visual elegance of the black-and-white drawings are surprisingly well-captured by the anime, despite the bright colors and lighting. Daisuke Nishio, the anime director, knows how to pace a scene and establish the proper sense of time and place. It helps that Ikegami's drawings and his sense of cutting and composition are so astutely cinematic in the first place.

The Crying Freeman manga is notable for its high doses of nudity, near-pornographic sex and extremely bloody violence. The anime doesn't stint on these elements either, although it takes great pains to stay within R-rated limits. However, the sheer beauty of their presentation here may win over otherwise hesitant viewers, while fully satisfying the already jaded fans of more hard-edged anime.

The "Crying Freeman" manga has also been adapted, considerably less faithfully, into two live-action films, CRYING FREEMAN (France, 1995), directed by Christophe Gans (BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF) and starring Mark Dacascos, and KILLER'S ROMANCE (Hong Kong, 1990), starring Simon Yam and Joey Wang.

Truly a Work of Art
Crying Freeman is a true work of art ahead of its time. Viewing this great anime is candy for the anime lover's eye. Kazuo Koike and Ryoichi Ikegami wrote the magna that turned into a smash hit. The plot is revolves around an assassin from the Chinese Mafia. Originally, an acclaimed pottery designer, Yoh Hinamura is drawn into a crime ring when he finds film that contains photographs of a murder. Brainwashed to be a killer he murders people and after every person, he kills, he weeps.

When a woman by the name of Emu Hino (age 29 and a virgin) witnesses a murder. They briefly and awkwardly talk for a moment before Yoh flees. Afterward she fears for her life.
When the Chinese Mafia, a drug and arms dealing business, expands into Japan police and a Japanese gang with a following of 26,000 members team up to stop the Mafia. In the first episode "Portrait of a Killer" Freeman, setting the plot into motion, assassinates the leader of the Japan gang. At that crime, by chance Freeman runs past Yoh. Their eyes never meet but she knows it was him.

When Freeman goes to assassinate Emu, she tells him that she knows she will be killed. Her final request is that she does not die a virgin. (Over protective late father kept her from experiencing love). She tells that she is a virgin to Yoh and he states that he is also a virgin. They have sex, revealing Yoh's intricate dragon tattoos. Both experiencing love for the first time, they start to car for each other and speeding up the process, she is shot in a scuffle immediately after they have sex. He rushes her to the hospital. Knowing that she will never be safe, he takes her in.

This anime is not for children or young teens for that matter. Crying Freeman has a mix of mild language with a large amount of upper nudity and several sexual orientations. All of this is heavily coated with pools of blood. This is a graphic anime but as stated earlier, this is geared toward a mature audience.

Recap: Beautiful anime that pushed the boundaries of acceptable anime when released in 1986. Till this day, Crying Freeman is still a crowd please. I loved it. If you are looking an anime with class but still contains a sexual and action packed adventure then you have found the right anime. Five Stars!

5 Stars From Me
I have all the volumes and love each one although the last two aren't as good as the first. The episodes start repeating themselves after a while. In the first, Freeman's origin of how he is turned into an assassin against his will is revealed and he cries each time he kills somebody as a release to his true self. He is sent to kill a woman but she doesn't want to die a virgin so she asks that he have sex with her before he kills her. Being the nice guy that he is, he agrees. He says he's also a virgin. I think he was lying. This guy has sex with pretty much every woman he meets in this series. He didn't start having sex until he met this woman in the first episode? I don't believe it. Anyway, he falls in love with her and marries her. The rest of the episodes go something like this: somebody or some group wants to kill Freeman and take over the 108 Dragons and Freeman stops them. That's pretty much it. Oh yea, plenty of killing, nudity and sex is thrown in. Some lovable characters are thrown in and some die sadly but it's all good. For me, the only let down is Freeman never becomes free. At the end of the series he is still a killer. I was expecting a breakthrough. His soul is obviously being tortured since he cries after he kills. I would have liked to see him break away from that life. But oh well. I still love it. It's a classic

Move over M.D. Geist...
....there's a new Worst Anime Ever in town. I never thought I'd say this, but an anime has come along that is actually worse than M.D. Geist. Those screams you're hearing are probably your own.

Crying Freeman is about a gentle artist who is turned into a merciless killer against his will. He fights to get his life back, as well as fighting for the clan who "adopted" him. The top assassin in the trade, he will always cry after killing, hence the codename: Crying Freeman.

And that's about a much a synopsis as you need for this TOTAL turkey. It borrows some elements from the manga, but takes only the worst of them, and animates (and I use this term VERY loosely) them on the screen.
Wait; did I say this was animated? I guess, in a way it is, but that is if you count those children's tapes that were so low-budget they would take still pictures and move parts of those pictures around to simulate movement as "animation". This is *beyond* yick. It looks like they scanned pictures from the manga (that's -one- way to get the art style faithful...who needs artists?), scribbled them with marker, and had the guy wiggle the page beneath the camera lens just to make it look remotely like it's animated. ("The page is moving, right? Therefore it's animation!")
As if this treatment wasn't enough, they chopped out everything in the story that made you sympathetic towards Freeman. You honestly couldn't give two swats of a guinea pig's tail (yes, I know they don't have tails!) for any character in this series. Well, they didn't take out ALL the content...there's still sex and violence, but the sex is anything but erotic and the violence was anything but graphic. Doesn't that sound -wrong- to you? It does to me too... That I watched six episodes full of this dreck amazes me to this day. Maybe I did it for love of the manga, and I could not accept this hideous abomination of his work as being anywhere near authentic.

If you really, really want to see this video series...have a lobotomy. It will soften the blow. Or better yet, wise up and go buy the manga series instead. The manga is a gripping, disturbing, sad, and ultimately compelling tale that it definitely worth trying out. The video series...is simply disturbing and sad, but not in the same way the manga is. I know now the real reason Freeman always cries...because he's trapped in such a truly awful "anime" series.

I am a saint for giving this thing one star.

I love it!
I'm a huge Crying Freeman fan! I'm so happy it's out on DVD! ... Read more

Reviews (26)

Superb anime version of solid crime-themed Japanese manga
CRYING FREEMAN: PORTRAIT OF A KILLER (1988) is the first of six Japanese anime volumes based on the manga (comic book) by Kazuo Koike and Ryoichi Ikegami about a handsome young sculptor who is forcibly recruited by the 108 Dragons, an ancient organization of Chinese assassins. We see him trained as an assassin and programmed to kill on their orders. His uncontrolled stream of tears after each killing and his yearning to be free give him the name, Crying Freeman.

Things get complicated when Freeman is forced to undertake the elimination of a witness to one of his killings. She is a beautiful, lonely, single Japanese woman and, like Freeman, an accomplished artist. They recognize each other as soul mates and he risks his life'and hers'to convince the organization of her value to him.

This 52-minute animated production is almost a perfect adaptation of the manga story and stands out as the best of the CRYING FREEMAN animated series. The dramatic mood and visual elegance of the black-and-white drawings are surprisingly well-captured by the anime, despite the bright colors and lighting. Daisuke Nishio, the anime director, knows how to pace a scene and establish the proper sense of time and place. It helps that Ikegami's drawings and his sense of cutting and composition are so astutely cinematic in the first place.

The Crying Freeman manga is notable for its high doses of nudity, near-pornographic sex and extremely bloody violence. The anime doesn't stint on these elements either, although it takes great pains to stay within R-rated limits. However, the sheer beauty of their presentation here may win over otherwise hesitant viewers, while fully satisfying the already jaded fans of more hard-edged anime.

The "Crying Freeman" manga has also been adapted, considerably less faithfully, into two live-action films, CRYING FREEMAN (France, 1995), directed by Christophe Gans (BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF) and starring Mark Dacascos, and KILLER'S ROMANCE (Hong Kong, 1990), starring Simon Yam and Joey Wang.

Truly a Work of Art
Crying Freeman is a true work of art ahead of its time. Viewing this great anime is candy for the anime lover's eye. Kazuo Koike and Ryoichi Ikegami wrote the magna that turned into a smash hit. The plot is revolves around an assassin from the Chinese Mafia. Originally, an acclaimed pottery designer, Yoh Hinamura is drawn into a crime ring when he finds film that contains photographs of a murder. Brainwashed to be a killer he murders people and after every person, he kills, he weeps.

When a woman by the name of Emu Hino (age 29 and a virgin) witnesses a murder. They briefly and awkwardly talk for a moment before Yoh flees. Afterward she fears for her life.
When the Chinese Mafia, a drug and arms dealing business, expands into Japan police and a Japanese gang with a following of 26,000 members team up to stop the Mafia. In the first episode "Portrait of a Killer" Freeman, setting the plot into motion, assassinates the leader of the Japan gang. At that crime, by chance Freeman runs past Yoh. Their eyes never meet but she knows it was him.

When Freeman goes to assassinate Emu, she tells him that she knows she will be killed. Her final request is that she does not die a virgin. (Over protective late father kept her from experiencing love). She tells that she is a virgin to Yoh and he states that he is also a virgin. They have sex, revealing Yoh's intricate dragon tattoos. Both experiencing love for the first time, they start to car for each other and speeding up the process, she is shot in a scuffle immediately after they have sex. He rushes her to the hospital. Knowing that she will never be safe, he takes her in.

This anime is not for children or young teens for that matter. Crying Freeman has a mix of mild language with a large amount of upper nudity and several sexual orientations. All of this is heavily coated with pools of blood. This is a graphic anime but as stated earlier, this is geared toward a mature audience.

Recap: Beautiful anime that pushed the boundaries of acceptable anime when released in 1986. Till this day, Crying Freeman is still a crowd please. I loved it. If you are looking an anime with class but still contains a sexual and action packed adventure then you have found the right anime. Five Stars!

5 Stars From Me
I have all the volumes and love each one although the last two aren't as good as the first. The episodes start repeating themselves after a while. In the first, Freeman's origin of how he is turned into an assassin against his will is revealed and he cries each time he kills somebody as a release to his true self. He is sent to kill a woman but she doesn't want to die a virgin so she asks that he have sex with her before he kills her. Being the nice guy that he is, he agrees. He says he's also a virgin. I think he was lying. This guy has sex with pretty much every woman he meets in this series. He didn't start having sex until he met this woman in the first episode? I don't believe it. Anyway, he falls in love with her and marries her. The rest of the episodes go something like this: somebody or some group wants to kill Freeman and take over the 108 Dragons and Freeman stops them. That's pretty much it. Oh yea, plenty of killing, nudity and sex is thrown in. Some lovable characters are thrown in and some die sadly but it's all good. For me, the only let down is Freeman never becomes free. At the end of the series he is still a killer. I was expecting a breakthrough. His soul is obviously being tortured since he cries after he kills. I would have liked to see him break away from that life. But oh well. I still love it. It's a classic

Move over M.D. Geist...
....there's a new Worst Anime Ever in town. I never thought I'd say this, but an anime has come along that is actually worse than M.D. Geist. Those screams you're hearing are probably your own.

Crying Freeman is about a gentle artist who is turned into a merciless killer against his will. He fights to get his life back, as well as fighting for the clan who "adopted" him. The top assassin in the trade, he will always cry after killing, hence the codename: Crying Freeman.

And that's about a much a synopsis as you need for this TOTAL turkey. It borrows some elements from the manga, but takes only the worst of them, and animates (and I use this term VERY loosely) them on the screen.
Wait; did I say this was animated? I guess, in a way it is, but that is if you count those children's tapes that were so low-budget they would take still pictures and move parts of those pictures around to simulate movement as "animation". This is *beyond* yick. It looks like they scanned pictures from the manga (that's -one- way to get the art style faithful...who needs artists?), scribbled them with marker, and had the guy wiggle the page beneath the camera lens just to make it look remotely like it's animated. ("The page is moving, right? Therefore it's animation!")
As if this treatment wasn't enough, they chopped out everything in the story that made you sympathetic towards Freeman. You honestly couldn't give two swats of a guinea pig's tail (yes, I know they don't have tails!) for any character in this series. Well, they didn't take out ALL the content...there's still sex and violence, but the sex is anything but erotic and the violence was anything but graphic. Doesn't that sound -wrong- to you? It does to me too... That I watched six episodes full of this dreck amazes me to this day. Maybe I did it for love of the manga, and I could not accept this hideous abomination of his work as being anywhere near authentic.

If you really, really want to see this video series...have a lobotomy. It will soften the blow. Or better yet, wise up and go buy the manga series instead. The manga is a gripping, disturbing, sad, and ultimately compelling tale that it definitely worth trying out. The video series...is simply disturbing and sad, but not in the same way the manga is. I know now the real reason Freeman always cries...because he's trapped in such a truly awful "anime" series.

I am a saint for giving this thing one star.

I love it!
I'm a huge Crying Freeman fan! I'm so happy it's out on DVD! ... Read more

Reviews (26)

Superb anime version of solid crime-themed Japanese manga
CRYING FREEMAN: PORTRAIT OF A KILLER (1988) is the first of six Japanese anime volumes based on the manga (comic book) by Kazuo Koike and Ryoichi Ikegami about a handsome young sculptor who is forcibly recruited by the 108 Dragons, an ancient organization of Chinese assassins. We see him trained as an assassin and programmed to kill on their orders. His uncontrolled stream of tears after each killing and his yearning to be free give him the name, Crying Freeman.

Things get complicated when Freeman is forced to undertake the elimination of a witness to one of his killings. She is a beautiful, lonely, single Japanese woman and, like Freeman, an accomplished artist. They recognize each other as soul mates and he risks his life'and hers'to convince the organization of her value to him.

This 52-minute animated production is almost a perfect adaptation of the manga story and stands out as the best of the CRYING FREEMAN animated series. The dramatic mood and visual elegance of the black-and-white drawings are surprisingly well-captured by the anime, despite the bright colors and lighting. Daisuke Nishio, the anime director, knows how to pace a scene and establish the proper sense of time and place. It helps that Ikegami's drawings and his sense of cutting and composition are so astutely cinematic in the first place.

The Crying Freeman manga is notable for its high doses of nudity, near-pornographic sex and extremely bloody violence. The anime doesn't stint on these elements either, although it takes great pains to stay within R-rated limits. However, the sheer beauty of their presentation here may win over otherwise hesitant viewers, while fully satisfying the already jaded fans of more hard-edged anime.

The "Crying Freeman" manga has also been adapted, considerably less faithfully, into two live-action films, CRYING FREEMAN (France, 1995), directed by Christophe Gans (BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF) and starring Mark Dacascos, and KILLER'S ROMANCE (Hong Kong, 1990), starring Simon Yam and Joey Wang.

Truly a Work of Art
Crying Freeman is a true work of art ahead of its time. Viewing this great anime is candy for the anime lover's eye. Kazuo Koike and Ryoichi Ikegami wrote the magna that turned into a smash hit. The plot is revolves around an assassin from the Chinese Mafia. Originally, an acclaimed pottery designer, Yoh Hinamura is drawn into a crime ring when he finds film that contains photographs of a murder. Brainwashed to be a killer he murders people and after every person, he kills, he weeps.

When a woman by the name of Emu Hino (age 29 and a virgin) witnesses a murder. They briefly and awkwardly talk for a moment before Yoh flees. Afterward she fears for her life.
When the Chinese Mafia, a drug and arms dealing business, expands into Japan police and a Japanese gang with a following of 26,000 members team up to stop the Mafia. In the first episode "Portrait of a Killer" Freeman, setting the plot into motion, assassinates the leader of the Japan gang. At that crime, by chance Freeman runs past Yoh. Their eyes never meet but she knows it was him.

When Freeman goes to assassinate Emu, she tells him that she knows she will be killed. Her final request is that she does not die a virgin. (Over protective late father kept her from experiencing love). She tells that she is a virgin to Yoh and he states that he is also a virgin. They have sex, revealing Yoh's intricate dragon tattoos. Both experiencing love for the first time, they start to car for each other and speeding up the process, she is shot in a scuffle immediately after they have sex. He rushes her to the hospital. Knowing that she will never be safe, he takes her in.

This anime is not for children or young teens for that matter. Crying Freeman has a mix of mild language with a large amount of upper nudity and several sexual orientations. All of this is heavily coated with pools of blood. This is a graphic anime but as stated earlier, this is geared toward a mature audience.

Recap: Beautiful anime that pushed the boundaries of acceptable anime when released in 1986. Till this day, Crying Freeman is still a crowd please. I loved it. If you are looking an anime with class but still contains a sexual and action packed adventure then you have found the right anime. Five Stars!

5 Stars From Me
I have all the volumes and love each one although the last two aren't as good as the first. The episodes start repeating themselves after a while. In the first, Freeman's origin of how he is turned into an assassin against his will is revealed and he cries each time he kills somebody as a release to his true self. He is sent to kill a woman but she doesn't want to die a virgin so she asks that he have sex with her before he kills her. Being the nice guy that he is, he agrees. He says he's also a virgin. I think he was lying. This guy has sex with pretty much every woman he meets in this series. He didn't start having sex until he met this woman in the first episode? I don't believe it. Anyway, he falls in love with her and marries her. The rest of the episodes go something like this: somebody or some group wants to kill Freeman and take over the 108 Dragons and Freeman stops them. That's pretty much it. Oh yea, plenty of killing, nudity and sex is thrown in. Some lovable characters are thrown in and some die sadly but it's all good. For me, the only let down is Freeman never becomes free. At the end of the series he is still a killer. I was expecting a breakthrough. His soul is obviously being tortured since he cries after he kills. I would have liked to see him break away from that life. But oh well. I still love it. It's a classic

Move over M.D. Geist...
....there's a new Worst Anime Ever in town. I never thought I'd say this, but an anime has come along that is actually worse than M.D. Geist. Those screams you're hearing are probably your own.

Crying Freeman is about a gentle artist who is turned into a merciless killer against his will. He fights to get his life back, as well as fighting for the clan who "adopted" him. The top assassin in the trade, he will always cry after killing, hence the codename: Crying Freeman.

And that's about a much a synopsis as you need for this TOTAL turkey. It borrows some elements from the manga, but takes only the worst of them, and animates (and I use this term VERY loosely) them on the screen.
Wait; did I say this was animated? I guess, in a way it is, but that is if you count those children's tapes that were so low-budget they would take still pictures and move parts of those pictures around to simulate movement as "animation". This is *beyond* yick. It looks like they scanned pictures from the manga (that's -one- way to get the art style faithful...who needs artists?), scribbled them with marker, and had the guy wiggle the page beneath the camera lens just to make it look remotely like it's animated. ("The page is moving, right? Therefore it's animation!")
As if this treatment wasn't enough, they chopped out everything in the story that made you sympathetic towards Freeman. You honestly couldn't give two swats of a guinea pig's tail (yes, I know they don't have tails!) for any character in this series. Well, they didn't take out ALL the content...there's still sex and violence, but the sex is anything but erotic and the violence was anything but graphic. Doesn't that sound -wrong- to you? It does to me too... That I watched six episodes full of this dreck amazes me to this day. Maybe I did it for love of the manga, and I could not accept this hideous abomination of his work as being anywhere near authentic.

If you really, really want to see this video series...have a lobotomy. It will soften the blow. Or better yet, wise up and go buy the manga series instead. The manga is a gripping, disturbing, sad, and ultimately compelling tale that it definitely worth trying out. The video series...is simply disturbing and sad, but not in the same way the manga is. I know now the real reason Freeman always cries...because he's trapped in such a truly awful "anime" series.

I am a saint for giving this thing one star.

I love it!
I'm a huge Crying Freeman fan! I'm so happy it's out on DVD! ... Read more

Reviews (332)

Brotherhood Of the Wolf-A Masterwork of Period Horror
Director Christopher Gans (Crying Freeman, Necronomicon)has adapted the 300 year old case of the Beast of Gevaudon into the absolutely brilliant BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF (Le Pacte De Loups). Samuel Le Bihan stars as King Louis the XV's chief naturalist, war veteren Gregoire De Fronsac, sent to the French countryside with his best friend, a Native American warrior named Mani (Marc DeCascos)to hunt and kill a wolf-like "beast" responsible for a series of bloody deaths. Along the way, they encounter political intrigue, a witchy courtisan (the stunning Monica Belucchi) and the Beast itself, with amazing results.
Although compared to The Matrix, Crouching Tiger and Jaws, I found this breathtaking film more in the vein of Tsui Hark's Once Upon a Time in China series, with a dose of Dragonslayer thrown in for good measure. Complete with amazing locations, spot-on costumes and butt-kicking Savate sequences courtesy of DeCascos, Le Bihan and the menacing Vincent Cassel (The Crimson Rivers), BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF was well worth the year's wait (it was released in France in January of 2001). By all means, treat yourself to this truly ORIGINAL film. Within five minutes, you'll forget the subtitles, drawn in by the film's voluptuous beauty and thrilling plot twists.

Magnificent folly, way ahead of its time
BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF (Le Pacte des Loups, 2001): In 18th century France, a brave young naturalist (Samuel Le Bihan [TROIS COULEURS ROUGE]) and his Native American companion (Mark Dacascos [DRIVE]) are hired to trace the origins of a bloodthirsty 'beast' which has been terrorizing the countryside, killing women and children. But their investigations uncover an appalling conspiracy which cuts to the very heart of French high society...

Loosely based on true events, this high-powered Gallic blockbuster - directed by Christophe Gans, hired on the strength of his incredible genre-bending adaptation of CRYING FREEEMAN - wowed French audiences when released in 2001. And no wonder! A high-kicking combination of horror movie, period drama, political thriller and 'Matrix'-inspired kung fu pageant, the film combines the best elements of these disparate sub-genres in a dazzling display of technical wizardry. Photographed in widescreen Super 35 by Dan Laustsen (MIMIC, THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN), and played with solemn conviction by an all-star cast - including relative newcomers Vincent Cassel (LA HAINE), Monica Bellucci (the MATRIX sequels) and Jeremie Renier (LES AMANTS CRIMINELS), and veterans Jean Yanne (most recently seen in BELLE MAMAN) and Edith Scob (the elegant heroine of Franju's LES YEUX SANS VISAGE) - the movie is a riot of action and intrigue, sustained by a multilayered screenplay (co-authored by Gans and Stephane Cabel) which recounts an elaborate fable of class warfare and religious bigotry during a grim period of French history. The fight scenes - choreographed with ruthless efficiency by Hong Kong movie veteran Phillip Kwok (MASTER OF THE FLYING GUILLOTINE, HARD-BOILED, TOMORROW NEVER DIES, etc.) - are fashioned with elegant grace, and edited to perfection by Sebastien Prangere and David Wu Dai-wai (another prominent HK movie figure, Ronny Yu Yan-tai's current editor of choice). Much of the film's otherworldly visual texture is due to the sumptuous art direction (by Guy-Claude Francois [JEFFERSON IN PARIS]) and costume design (by Dominique Borg), which roots proceedings in a recognizable period 'style', despite Gans' resolutely modern approach to the material. It shouldn't work, but it does, somehow. The 'explanation' for the beast and its murderous activities - which takes into account a wide range of modern research into the story of an animal which really DID terrorize the French countryside during the 18th century - forms the backbone of the entire production, and while much of the film is a rip-roaring joy, the climactic sequences are offset by an element of tragedy and sadness, which thoroughly distinguishes the movie from most of its Hollywood counterparts. All in all, BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF is a magnificent folly, way ahead of its time, and quite unlike anything ever made before.

This review is based on a viewing of the Canadian disc from TVR Films which presents the original French version in its entirety (the international version, including the one released in the US and UK, appears to be shorter by about 10 minutes) and runs 150m 34s, minus the logos which open the video print and weren't part of the original production, and letterboxes the scope frame at 2.35:1 (anamorphically enhanced). The US disc - a region 1 release from Universal - is a no-frills affair which features a letterboxed anamorphic version of the shorter print, and some reviews suggest it's a better-looking transfer than the one featured on the Canadian disc. Captions and subtitles are provided. The Canadian version, however, is a 3-disc spectacular, and features (amongst many other things) an extremely frank documentary on the making of the film which opens with an actress being clobbered during an accident on-set, and proceeds to outline the various obstacles which constantly threatened the production schedule (not least the unpredictable weather during location shooting) and ultimately strained relations between director Gans and co-producer Samuel Hadida. That such a remarkable film emerged from these traumatic circumstances says much about the talent and dedication of these extraordinary gentlemen and all those who helped bring their unique vision to the silver screen. A triumph.

terrible!
i am completely amazed as i read the other reviews of this movie and have to wonder if we saw the same film.
did we?
a movie with no characterization? terrible dialogue? a lot of slow-motion action sequences (trying desperately to copy the John Woo style)? a lot of style and glitz but no plot motivation to back it up? and a SUPER hokey ending?
and don't even get me started on the character of Mani. i'm from the region Mani is said to come from, and all of the displays of Native American traditions which are presented in this film are fabricated and presented to the point that i was insulted!

did we see the same movie?
this is a good movie for cutiosity sake but little else.

Regarding the Beast
From the outset of Le Pacte de Loups, we know that the central beast of the movie is no ordinary wolf. Regarding its identification, however - a point that is never truly elucidated whether you've seen the film or not - there remains debate. My initial and superseding question is, no matter how the beast appears, what makes it impossible to believe in the beast's specificity as a common French wolf? This fact is unmistakable to my intuitions. Many of you might not know French, but I looked it up and "loup" is actually French for "wolf" - not "beast," like many appear to think. First point, the movie title states this so-called mysterious answer from the outset. If the beast was a hyena, the French would be referring to "hyènes," and were it a lion, it would actually be called "lion" (the two languages share this word).

If you need more evidence, there is no lack in the film. Our beast is often seen running with its pack, howling at the moon, and killing people. While Grégoire attempts to denounce the belief in human murders by wolf, one of the final scenes of the movie clearly depicts wolves doing just that: an obvious statement to disaffirm his slander. If you listen to the revealing narrative at the end of the film, it is stated that while visiting Africa Jean-François found the beast and raised her offspring, selecting the largest and strongest to take back with him to France and training it to be more ferocious and cruel than the average wolf.

***WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD.
Earlier we learn that this character has been savaged by a lion, which resulted in the loss of his right forelimb. Would you take the same animal that disfigured you and raise it as your own? Neither would Jean-François.

I had to chuckle at some of these reviews!
Wow! Four out of five. Three out of five. You have to be joking don't you? This movie is perfection. Pure, true, honest, stylish. Of course Americans get a bit ruffled when a 'foreign' film shows the good old US of A how 'it's done' yet again. You folk like you're movies with justification, explanation and gradification... all tied up in a bow. This movie is not sugar covered and goes in depth within (I won't give it away for those that have not seen it) an area that goes way back in time and is still happening today (Bohemiam Grove hint hint etc)which has always fascinated me. So why would you not like it? Firstly that pesky 'other' language (yes, it's in French - and so it should be) makes those of less IQ's have to read. Pesky pesky. Secondly it has many layers as a movie and does not always have to explain EVERYTHING that is going on, and instead relies on the intellect of it's viewers and allows us to progress on the journey and make up our own minds as to how, why and who. I will not go into 'explaining' the film as it is done already in the top review and you all seem to explain it over and over again. I am not French as you may all think, and instead an Aussie relieved and satisfied that a certain standard of perfection is retained in some movies in the world. Erotic, scary, action, suspense, intelligent, beautiful. Simply one of the best movies I have seen this year. (I'll put money on it that America will remake this movie very soon... and yet again bugger up another classic foreign film that should have been left well alone! Please don't! I beg you!) ... Read more

Description

Journey into the pit of hell with horror master H.P. Lovecraft (Jeffrey Combs) in this chilling thriller. An intoxicating thrill ride filled with gruesome special effects, Necronomicon combines the classic horror of Evil Dead with the gothic pleasures of Bram Stoker's Dracula. Year: 1993 Director: Brian Yuzna, Christophe Gans, Shsuke Kaneko Starring:Bruce Payne, Belinda Bauer, Bess Meyer ... Read more

Reviews (25)

H.P. Lovecraft Lives!
What a film. While not a great film in Acamedy Award level production values, this is a really good movie. Seldom has this reviewer seen the power and atmosphere of Lovecraft's work placed on film. HPL purists have good reason to complain that the 3 stories in this anthology style treatment have very little to do with any specific Lovecraft work, but the overall chemistry of the film has captured the distilled essence of HPL even better than Re-Animator did. It is as if HPL himself was left to do the cinematography, set decoration, casting, foley, ADR and scoring to this film. Those not familiar with Lovecraft might be quite confused, but more open-minded fans of his work will recognize elements from a dozen or more HPL stories permiating the film. The venerable Jeff Coombs plays HPL himself who locates the evil book in a library. Other great faces include David Warner in an unforgettable role as well as Richard Lynch and Bruce Payne. SFX are above passible and the whole film is a gory joyride. Necronomicon is an overlooked gem of a horror film that deserves a view. Can't wait till it makes it to DVD!

Entertaining
This has all the makings of a good Lovecraft adatpion, namely Jeffery Combs and the Necronomicon. 3 stories linked together by the mysterious black book called Necronomicon. Really gory, but doesn't take itself too seriously. Combs is the actor king of H.P. Lovecraft adaptions and Brian Yuzna is also a really good contributor to Lovecraft films, namely his skills as a producer and the more recent Beyond Re-Animator. Worth a look for anyone even casually interested in modern horror films.

Entertaining B Movie
I got this on the cheap, and if you're a fan of cheesy, B movie horror with lots of gooey special effects and can find it cheap, do so. Don't expect a legitimate Lovecraft tie-in: Lovecraft appears as a character in a "wraparound" uniting three unrelated stories, but it's not Lovecraft the historical character--there's a disclaimer at the end of the film admitting as much--nor do the stories themselves reflect Lovecraft's ethos. Lovecraft was about understatement and suggestion; this film takes the opposite track with dripping gore and monsters in full view. To me, that's no bad thing, but as you can tell from the reviews here, plenty of hard-core Lovecraft fans disagree. What the movie does offer is plenty of slime covered latex masks and monsters, and you get good views of them; one pretty good story, one mediocre story, and one gross-out fairly stupid story; lots of mediocre to bad acting, and a quick, totally gratuitous and titillating (so to speak) shot of one of the actresses naked in the shower. If that's what you want to pay your money for, go for it. I admit to my own amusement and entertainment.

Good Entertainment
Aside from the Lovecraftian aspects, this movie is good for entertainment value. If you want to watch a horror movie that is different from the rest, Lovecraftian adaptations seem to be a lot more interesting than the average flick.

However, on the Lovecraftian aspects, the movie title is misleading. The plot may be constructed around the book itself, but the movie gives absolutely no audience to the story Lovecraft put behind it. I give it three out of five - the movie impliments Lovecraftian ideas, but does not deliver the actual story Lovecraft wrote about the Necronomicon.

The Harsh Hands of Lovecraft Fans
For some reason, people give this movie such low marks without giving actually viewing the movie as a movie. Perhaps its because the name HP Lovecraft was attached to yet another adaptation failure, and they thought, quite foolishly, that this meant that there would be a Lovecraftian film that was actually Lovecraftian. Well, that never happens and the H.P. is almost always attached to sell more movies and to get more bad reviews. Still, while not a standout jewel in the forum of monster movies (and what really is in the true monstrosity arena?), it does hits 4.5 star highs and 2.2 star lows to make it worth seeing. You just have to forget that nefarious little label.
This movie is set in 1932 with everyone's favorite actor, the immortal Jeffrey Combs, as a strangle Indiana Joneseque version of H.P. Lovecraft. In it, Lovecraft decides to steal a view (and the book itself later) of the infamous Necronomicon despite the wishes (and warnings of its keepers). Taking a key from one of its monk keepers, he finds his way to a secretive chamber where he finds the book and begins to transcribe three stories - The Drowned, The Cold, and The Whispers - from what he sees here.
The Drowned, a story borrowing from Lovecraftian themes and mingling in some ideas from differing stories, is about a man returning to an inherited hotel and finding more than he bargained for. Our main character looks over a letter from his Uncle that, in flashback sequencing, finds his family dead and denouncing God for it. After throwing his bible to the ground, he is visited by a good looking Deep One who replaces the book with another. Reading from it, he finds his family returned, but only in a small sense of the word. Well, our main character, seeing only the "raising the dead" and not the lesson in the tale, decides to liberate the book from its hiding place and resurrect his long lost wife, leading us to a showdown with a huge one-eyed monster (I can't call the thing great cthulhu).
The Cold, a good piece adapted from Cool Air, begins with a reporter who is investigating a series of murders going to a house and speaking to the current owner. After loosing her tongue her with a series of threats, she reveals a story involving her mother and a doctor with a "Skin condition" that first owned this place. This story's ending is actual good, plus the body of the tale is also an interesting piece. I would have to say it also pulls its weight with a 3.5 to a 4.0 rating.
Wanting to forget The Whispers, I'll only break it down briefly. Here is a tale about a female officer chasing a criminal who turns out not to be a criminal unto a cavern (more like an abandoned sewer) of terror (and yawning). It has a little gore, some scary homeless people - one of which is blind -, a lot of crawling and chasing, and some really, really bad acting. I would give it a 2.2 only because I had to spit on the other two pieces here.
If you haven't seen this movie before, its not really a bad addition to anyone's growing horror selection. Just don't build a house of expectations on it. ... Read more

Reviews (26)

Superb anime version of solid crime-themed Japanese manga
CRYING FREEMAN: PORTRAIT OF A KILLER (1988) is the first of six Japanese anime volumes based on the manga (comic book) by Kazuo Koike and Ryoichi Ikegami about a handsome young sculptor who is forcibly recruited by the 108 Dragons, an ancient organization of Chinese assassins. We see him trained as an assassin and programmed to kill on their orders. His uncontrolled stream of tears after each killing and his yearning to be free give him the name, Crying Freeman.

Things get complicated when Freeman is forced to undertake the elimination of a witness to one of his killings. She is a beautiful, lonely, single Japanese woman and, like Freeman, an accomplished artist. They recognize each other as soul mates and he risks his life'and hers'to convince the organization of her value to him.

This 52-minute animated production is almost a perfect adaptation of the manga story and stands out as the best of the CRYING FREEMAN animated series. The dramatic mood and visual elegance of the black-and-white drawings are surprisingly well-captured by the anime, despite the bright colors and lighting. Daisuke Nishio, the anime director, knows how to pace a scene and establish the proper sense of time and place. It helps that Ikegami's drawings and his sense of cutting and composition are so astutely cinematic in the first place.

The Crying Freeman manga is notable for its high doses of nudity, near-pornographic sex and extremely bloody violence. The anime doesn't stint on these elements either, although it takes great pains to stay within R-rated limits. However, the sheer beauty of their presentation here may win over otherwise hesitant viewers, while fully satisfying the already jaded fans of more hard-edged anime.

The "Crying Freeman" manga has also been adapted, considerably less faithfully, into two live-action films, CRYING FREEMAN (France, 1995), directed by Christophe Gans (BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF) and starring Mark Dacascos, and KILLER'S ROMANCE (Hong Kong, 1990), starring Simon Yam and Joey Wang.

Truly a Work of Art
Crying Freeman is a true work of art ahead of its time. Viewing this great anime is candy for the anime lover's eye. Kazuo Koike and Ryoichi Ikegami wrote the magna that turned into a smash hit. The plot is revolves around an assassin from the Chinese Mafia. Originally, an acclaimed pottery designer, Yoh Hinamura is drawn into a crime ring when he finds film that contains photographs of a murder. Brainwashed to be a killer he murders people and after every person, he kills, he weeps.

When a woman by the name of Emu Hino (age 29 and a virgin) witnesses a murder. They briefly and awkwardly talk for a moment before Yoh flees. Afterward she fears for her life.
When the Chinese Mafia, a drug and arms dealing business, expands into Japan police and a Japanese gang with a following of 26,000 members team up to stop the Mafia. In the first episode "Portrait of a Killer" Freeman, setting the plot into motion, assassinates the leader of the Japan gang. At that crime, by chance Freeman runs past Yoh. Their eyes never meet but she knows it was him.

When Freeman goes to assassinate Emu, she tells him that she knows she will be killed. Her final request is that she does not die a virgin. (Over protective late father kept her from experiencing love). She tells that she is a virgin to Yoh and he states that he is also a virgin. They have sex, revealing Yoh's intricate dragon tattoos. Both experiencing love for the first time, they start to car for each other and speeding up the process, she is shot in a scuffle immediately after they have sex. He rushes her to the hospital. Knowing that she will never be safe, he takes her in.

This anime is not for children or young teens for that matter. Crying Freeman has a mix of mild language with a large amount of upper nudity and several sexual orientations. All of this is heavily coated with pools of blood. This is a graphic anime but as stated earlier, this is geared toward a mature audience.

Recap: Beautiful anime that pushed the boundaries of acceptable anime when released in 1986. Till this day, Crying Freeman is still a crowd please. I loved it. If you are looking an anime with class but still contains a sexual and action packed adventure then you have found the right anime. Five Stars!

5 Stars From Me
I have all the volumes and love each one although the last two aren't as good as the first. The episodes start repeating themselves after a while. In the first, Freeman's origin of how he is turned into an assassin against his will is revealed and he cries each time he kills somebody as a release to his true self. He is sent to kill a woman but she doesn't want to die a virgin so she asks that he have sex with her before he kills her. Being the nice guy that he is, he agrees. He says he's also a virgin. I think he was lying. This guy has sex with pretty much every woman he meets in this series. He didn't start having sex until he met this woman in the first episode? I don't believe it. Anyway, he falls in love with her and marries her. The rest of the episodes go something like this: somebody or some group wants to kill Freeman and take over the 108 Dragons and Freeman stops them. That's pretty much it. Oh yea, plenty of killing, nudity and sex is thrown in. Some lovable characters are thrown in and some die sadly but it's all good. For me, the only let down is Freeman never becomes free. At the end of the series he is still a killer. I was expecting a breakthrough. His soul is obviously being tortured since he cries after he kills. I would have liked to see him break away from that life. But oh well. I still love it. It's a classic

Move over M.D. Geist...
....there's a new Worst Anime Ever in town. I never thought I'd say this, but an anime has come along that is actually worse than M.D. Geist. Those screams you're hearing are probably your own.

Crying Freeman is about a gentle artist who is turned into a merciless killer against his will. He fights to get his life back, as well as fighting for the clan who "adopted" him. The top assassin in the trade, he will always cry after killing, hence the codename: Crying Freeman.

And that's about a much a synopsis as you need for this TOTAL turkey. It borrows some elements from the manga, but takes only the worst of them, and animates (and I use this term VERY loosely) them on the screen.
Wait; did I say this was animated? I guess, in a way it is, but that is if you count those children's tapes that were so low-budget they would take still pictures and move parts of those pictures around to simulate movement as "animation". This is *beyond* yick. It looks like they scanned pictures from the manga (that's -one- way to get the art style faithful...who needs artists?), scribbled them with marker, and had the guy wiggle the page beneath the camera lens just to make it look remotely like it's animated. ("The page is moving, right? Therefore it's animation!")
As if this treatment wasn't enough, they chopped out everything in the story that made you sympathetic towards Freeman. You honestly couldn't give two swats of a guinea pig's tail (yes, I know they don't have tails!) for any character in this series. Well, they didn't take out ALL the content...there's still sex and violence, but the sex is anything but erotic and the violence was anything but graphic. Doesn't that sound -wrong- to you? It does to me too... That I watched six episodes full of this dreck amazes me to this day. Maybe I did it for love of the manga, and I could not accept this hideous abomination of his work as being anywhere near authentic.

If you really, really want to see this video series...have a lobotomy. It will soften the blow. Or better yet, wise up and go buy the manga series instead. The manga is a gripping, disturbing, sad, and ultimately compelling tale that it definitely worth trying out. The video series...is simply disturbing and sad, but not in the same way the manga is. I know now the real reason Freeman always cries...because he's trapped in such a truly awful "anime" series.

I am a saint for giving this thing one star.

I love it!
I'm a huge Crying Freeman fan! I'm so happy it's out on DVD! ... Read more