The Empire of the Wolves
R
2005
**1/2 out of ****

Part 2 of my Jean Reno movie kick, this is a darker french thriller with Jean Reno sharing the spotlight with Arly Jover (you’d probably recognize her from Blade) and Jocelyn Quivrin (lately of Syriana). This is a decent movie, but nothing special.

Premise: Jocelyn Quivrin is a French detective with a serial killer on his hands who is murdering young women - illegal Turkish immigrant young women, to be exact. Jean Reno is a “retired” cop who used to police Turkish neighborhoods brought in to consult. Arly Jover is a woman whose reality is coming apart at the seams as she loses more and more of her memory - is it a mental illness, or something more sinister? It all ties together in an organization called “The Gray Wolves”.

This movie started out strong. Your interest was especially piqued by Arly Jover’s situation, more so when she finds evidence that she has had complete face altering plastic surgery that she has no memory of. Jean Reno spices up the Jocelyn Quivrin storyline that would otherwise be totally bland. But as the movie wears on, the storyline starts to get pretty convoluted. And it goes on for too long (a common complaint from me, I’m noticing). I’m actually not sure what could have been cut out to make this movie shorter - it was all pretty necessary to even halfway explain the convoluted story.


Biggest problem with this movie is that it went on too long - plus, the story got convoluted and wasn’t as clear as it should have been. Jean Reno and Jocelyn Quivrin’s characters were fairly bland - Reno finally gets interesting towards the end of the movie, but Quivrin is stuck with the bland cute cop persona through the whole film.

Just as a side note, the actor who plays the assassin killing the Turkish women is unbelievably gorgeous. ^_^ Just felt like I needed to point that out.

Anyway, the movie was decent, but nowhere near as good as it could have been. Acting was fine, but suffered because of the writing. There were some great scenes, one of my favorites being towards the end Arly Jover having it out with the beautiful assassin with a wicked claw thing on her hand. ^_^ Worth seeing if you enjoy dark thrillers and Jean Reno. If not, don’t even bother.