TWO BROTHERS

TWO BROTHERS is a very slightly edgier version of the kind of movie that Walt Disney Pictures made much of its live-action reputation on and that just about nobody makes nowadays an animal adventure that tightrope-walks a line between anthropomorphic and realistic behavior. Director Jean-Jacques Annaud and co-screenwriter Alain Godard do an excellent job of setting up pacing and plot without ever the main tiger characters do anything well, almost anything that tigers just don't do.

Set during the days of the British Raj in Southeast Asia, TWO BROTHERS begins with the (discreetly filmed) mating of two tigers, who produce two cubs. English big-game hunter Aidan McRory (Guy Pearce), deciding that there's more money to be made in sacred statues than his previous trade in ivory, winds up disturbing the temple where the tigers have taken refuge. McRory winds up killing the father tiger and finding one of the cubs, who he befriends in spite of himself. Due to some bad luck on McRory's part, Kumar is taken from him and eventually sold to a circus. Meanwhile, the other cub is separated from his mother and winds up first in the home of a French diplomat (Jean-Claude Dreyfus), who gives the animal to his young son Raoul (Freddie Highmore). Sungha is Raoul's best friend until there is an incident with another animal. Sungha is deemed a dangerous beast who is given to a local nobleman (Oanh Nyugen). A year later, the nobleman decides to match his tiger against another in an arena fight to the death, but the big cats recognize one another and have other ideas.

The movie does take a few liberties with known tiger activity male tigers tend not to stick around their mates once the act is done, let alone to help raise the cubs but we have no narration, voiceover thoughts, subtitles or anything else suggesting human speech or thought from the big cats. The filmmakers shrewdly set up how things the tigers learn early on come into play later in their lives and of course the animals themselves are extraordinarily beautiful. Wisely, the movie doesn't dwell too much on any of the humans who, with the exception of Raoul, are depicted as a pretty dismal bunch (indeed, most of them are so objectionable you wish they'd wind up in another recent Universal release, DAWN OF THE DEAD). There's a lackluster romance between McRory and a local woman and some familial disappointment drama with both the circus folks and the prince, but none of it takes hold fortunately, it all serves to move the tigers' story along. We do wind up hoping that McRory will develop a moral backbone in time to prevent catastrophe, but again, that's more for the sake of the cats than for the human character, though Pearce does a decent job in the role.

Fortunately, TWO BROTHERS is not there to be judged for its scenes of humans. Annaud has captured some extraordinary action from his feline stars without making us fear that anything untoward happened during filming; he also tells a clear and compelling story that is largely without speech, an impressive feat unto itself.

TWO BROTHERS is unabashedly pro-tiger, with a lot of subtle observations about the damage that can be done when people who aren't necessarily malicious turn a blind eye something that many supposedly more sophisticated films don't achieve with such grace. It's a gripping drama, has moments of great tenderness and there probably won't be another movie all year with two such charismatic leads.