The Wolf

Cert: 15

IT'S not often that yours truly sits down to watch a French film. Even less a French film with subtitles.

But the idea of a kung fu werewolf western caught my interest, so I duly gave up more than two hours of my life to watch it.

Luckily, as a genre-busting action fest it's hard to beat - it's got huge Bruce Lee-type fights, buckets of blood, an enormous monster and some terrific action sequences.

The film looks gorgeous, too - it's set

in mid 18th Century France and comes across like a Gallic Hammer horror film.

The story is apparently based on a true account of a huge beast which terrorised Gevaudan. It tells of how the King's envoy, Chevalier de Fronsac, arrives to defeat it and initially fails.

He's been travelling the world learning martial arts (hence the fights), and brings with him an equally high-kicking Iroquois Indian. When the true account ends, the film makers make up their own mind what really happened and it's completely mental.

Outrageously entertaining for the first 90 minutes, it does fizzle out a bit for the last half hour. Chris Wood