Deux frères (2004)

User Rating:

6.8/10   

Director:

Jean-Jacques Annaud

Writers:

Alain Godard (scenario) &
Jean-Jacques Annaud (scenario) ...

Release Date:

25 June 2004 (USA)

Genre:

Adventure | Drama | Family

Tagline:

Two infant tiger cubs, separated from their parents and each other.

Plot:

Two tigers are separated as cubs and taken into captivity, only to be reunited years later as enemies by an explorer (Pearce) who inadvertently forces them to fight each other.

Plot Keywords:

Tiger | Circus | Jungle | Sold To Circus | Dog

Awards:

2 wins & 1 nomination

Cast

Guy Pearce	...	Aidan McRory
Jean-Claude Dreyfus	...	Administrator Eugene Normandin
Freddie Highmore	...	Raoul Normandin
Oanh Nguyen	...	His Excellency
Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu	...	Mrs. Normandin
Moussa Maaskri	...	Saladin
Vincent Scarito	...	Zerbino
Maï Anh Le	...	Naï-Rea
Jaran 'See Tao' Petcharoen	...	The Village Chief (as Jaran Phetjareon 'Sitao')
Stéphanie Lagarde	...	Miss Paulette
Bernard Flavien	...	His Excellency's Majordomo
Annop Varapanya	...	Sergent Van Tranh
David Gant	...	Auctioneer
Teerawat Mulvilai	...	Verlaine (as Teerawat Mulvilai 'Ka-Nge')
Somjin Chimwong	...	Napoleon (as Somjin Chimwong 'Nen')

Also Known As:

Two Brothers (International: English title) (UK) (USA)
Deux frères (France)

MPAA:

Rated PG for mild violence.

Runtime:

109 min

Country:

France | UK

Language:

English | Thai | French

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

DTS | Dolby Digital

Certification:

France:U | South Korea:All | Argentina:Atp | Australia:PG | Canada:PG | Finland:K-7 | Germany:6 | Netherlands:MG6 | Norway:7 | Singapore:PG | Switzerland:7 (canton of Geneva) | Switzerland:7 (canton of Vaud) | USA:PG | Philippines:G

Filming Locations:

Bangkok, Thailand

Company:

Pathé

Trivia:

Guy Pearce insisted on being filmed with an adult tiger. Usually, these scenes are filmed separately.

Goofs:

Anachronisms: As his Excellency is getting off the elephant, he walks down an Air France Stairway. Air France didn't exist until 1933. The movie takes place in the 1920s.

Quotes:

Aidan McRory: Where did you learn your English?
Naï-Rea: His Excellency asked the Australian priests to open a school here to teach us languages.
Aidan McRory: Well, I'm very impressed. What else did they teach you?
Naï-Rea: To beware of white men.

Movie Connections:

Featured in "Troldspejlet: (#32.4)" (2004)

Soundtrack:

La Marseillaise

interesting at times but can't overcome the cuteness

Although I instinctively recoil at any attempt by filmmakers to convert majestic animals into little more than furry, four-legged human beings, I had hoped that director Jean-Jacques Annaud would be able to avoid that pitfall in "Two Brothers," a tale of two tiger cubs who become separated for a year, only to be reunited when they are each fully grown. Instead, Annaud goes for broke in making these two magnificent creatures as human as is humanly possible, rendering them far less interesting in the process.

Upon their separation, one of the little ones gets carted off to a local circus where he is mistreated by his sadistic handlers, while the other is adopted as a pet by a young boy, the son of a local administrator. Then, once the tiger gets to be too big and too difficult to handle, he is sent to be part of a menagerie belonging to a spoiled prince who wants to turn him into a fearsome fighting beast. Guy Pearce plays a pragmatic but tender-hearted hunter/black marketeer whose life path intersects with those of the cubs throughout the course of the story, and whose character transformation is one of the least believable aspects of a film that is not all that rooted in credibility to begin with.

Admittedly, Annaud does an impressive job getting up close and personal with the tigers, and he certainly has an amazing ability to get these wild beasts to do what he wants them to do on camera. Unfortunately, just about everything he has them do smacks of anthropomorphic phoniness, essentially depriving them of their true nature as creatures of instinct and not calculation. As this is a family-oriented film, we get none of that National Geographic unpleasantness of the tigers tracking down and devouring their helpless prey. In fact, we wonder just what these animals eat in the course of a day to keep themselves so fit and healthy. The director also lays it on a bit thick with all his soulful close-ups of the tigers, particularly when they are cubs, looking just too sad-eyed and adorable for words. In addition, Annaud simply can't resist throwing in numerous scenes of lowbrow slapstick to show just what fun-loving roustabouts these dear little tigers are.

The film also suffers from a serious technical problem. I'm not sure what kind of camera Annaud used to film his scenes, but the picture tends to become very blurry every time either the camera moves or a figure moves in the frame. Given the number of shots of tigers racing across the screen, this visual imperfection becomes a serious detriment indeed.

I guess that if one views "Two Brothers" as a fantasy film of sorts, it makes the whole enterprise somehow easier to swallow. For me, I think I'll stick to National Geographic and the Discovery Channel and leave the animal fantasy stuff to Disney.