[Blood and Chocolate]
Plot:A young beautiful werewolf named Vivian seeks peace in the arms of a human named Aiden while escaping the never-ending infatuation Gabriel has with her. But when a string of murders happen, this threatens to rip apart and expose her pack.

Cast: Agnes Bruckner, Hugh Dancy, Olivier Martinez, Katja Riemann, Bryan Dick, Chris Geere, Tom Harper, John Kerr, Jack Wilson, Vitalie Ursu, Bogdan Voda, Kata Dobó, Rodica Mandache, Lia Bugnar, Mihai Calin.

My Thoughts:Quite disappointing.

Review:I knew I was in for a bad time with "Blood and Chocolate" when I found out the wolves in the film weren't werewolves but just regular people who could shapeshift into wolves. With that being said, going into last night's screening of the film I wasn't expecting anything great with this movie. And that's exactly what I got....nothing great. "Blood and Chocolate" is the usual lovers in peril tale, and plays on one of those situations most of us have or will have to deal with in life. Fall in love with someone who your family thinks is the "wrong" person for you, and the next thing you know it's this whole big thing. Agnes Bruckner plays Vivian, a half wolf half girl....referred to along with the rest of her kind in this film as "legaloo's" or something along those lines. A mystical name for people who can shapeshift into wolves. She is part of an underground society of others like her who rule from afar, and utterly despise man for the crimes he has commited against them. This plot point is laid out in the beginning of the film where a group of gun-toting thugs invade Vivian's home when she's a little girl and murder her parents. Vivian has been promised to Gabriel, the leader of the pack who plans to wed her. Problem's arise however when Vivian meets a young artist named Aiden. Soon him and her begin to connect, despite her numerous attempts to avoid him and warnings that he should just forget about her. This infuriates her pack who throughout the movie continue to put pressure of her to stay away from Aiden -- or they'll make sure he's not "around" anymore. The problem with "Blood and Chocolate" is it's matriarch like storyline, which resembles the pecking order and power struggles that are prevalent in both "Underworld" movies. Not surprising "Blood and Chocolate" has almost the same sort or plot base seeing as how the producers of "Underworld" were behind this film. Unlike "Underworld", where the power struggles within the vampire and werewolf clans are very intriguing to watch, the power struggle within the wolf clan in "B&C" is boring and tedious at best. The problem is it's quite childish. As opposed to the situations in "Underworld" where two or three powerful leaders are battling for position and power...the Gabriel character in this film comes across as a spoiled European guy who says constantly he wants to lead his pack into a new age of hope (a phrase which is tossed about many times in this film), but yet never bothers to take the reigns unless he's teaching some two bit drug dealer a lesson or something along those lines. Another issue is his pursuit of Vivian, which only exists because she's the only girl in the fold. Seriously....there's like one other female wolf/woman character in the movie -- and she's pushing 40, and it's like well of course Gabriel wants Vivian...what other option is there really?? I was shocked to learn that this film was written by Ehren Krueger because it contained very little blood and almost no violence and most of Krueger's horror scripts are usually "R" rated material . I guess they were told early that this film was being targeted towards a PG-13 audience and so they had to keep it 90% spotless. The plot also goes absolutely nowhere and sometimes finds itself going around in circles with similar situations being played out over and over again. There are some good things to be said about "Blood and Chocolate" however. There is one scene in particular where Vivian is forced to save Aiden's life when it is discovered by her pack that Aiden in self defense killed Vivian's brother Rafe, and after a lengthy pursuit of Vivian and Aiden, they manage to capture them both and take Aiden to the woods where they play this really mean "hunting" game with him. This scene is quite awesome due to the good looking visual FX used for the wolf transformations and because of how it plays out in sort of an edgy and heart-string tugging kind of way. Agnes Bruckner is certainly coming into her own, and I think she's got a pretty good future in acting considering how well she performs in this movie. While the film itself is very thin around the edges and lacks a story with any real meat to it, the character of Vivian is an interesting person to watch on screen because of her good looks and sometimes brooding and always mysterious personality. She even get's down and dirty a bit throwing lethal kicks and punches in the films final act when she has to protect Aiden from various members of her clan who are out for his blood and are willing to kill Vivian, who's one of their own -- just to get to him. The on-screen chemistry between Vivian and Aiden (Hugh Dancy) is also quite good, the two of them when on screen together, provide for some funny and entertaining moments as the movie goes along. It's a shame that with an extremely talented female lead like Agnes B., and some pretty slick visual FX....that this movie wasn't pushed on the hardcore and graphic side, as much as it was pushed on the romantic/drama side of things. "Blood and Chocolate" could've been a great movie that could've turned the genre upside down with it's unique way of implementing lycans into a storyline. Unfortunately like most horror films these days, it only got a small part of the equation correct.

Positives:Great visual FX, great acting by Bruckner and Dancy. The films final act is pretty entertaining.

Negatives:A very weak script. Wasn't near as graphic as it should've been. Bad acting by the films supporting cast.

Overall:If not for the performances of Agnes Bruckner and Hugh Dancy, "B&C" would've been a strong candidate for worst horror film of 2007 in my opinion.





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