Metacritic reviews

Annaud presents a meticulously structured fable about the importance of family, particularly the relationship of fathers and sons, to both man and beast.

There's something simple yet miraculous about watching these beautiful animals interact with the wild and each other, even if their actions are being manipulated for the sake of drama. Annaud has taken his film's message to heart: He knows when to get out of nature's way.

That Annaud and his deft production team create believable dramatic characters without compromising the dignity of the animals they've borrowed as stars -- is the striking (and sometimes unnerving) achievement of a film that also swoops and loops through fairytale hoops.

As in "The Bear," Annaud eschews animal voice-over and visual F/X in favor of live, almost wordless action. The result is the humanization of animals and the animalization of humans.

Tigers are such rare and beautiful creatures that you could just film them running around an enclosure for an hour or so and many would pay to see it. Annaud adds much more, and has made a compelling story that's truly for the whole family, without being overly sentimental.

Watching them, you realize how far computers still have to go in accurately depicting the play of muscles as beasts run, crouch and leap. Though Annaud doesn't cut to them for cute reaction shots, as weak directors do, the tigers show near-human fears and affections.

The animal action is often gripping and suspenseful. As a whole, a giant step beyond Annaud's earlier animal movie, "The Bear," a more gimmicky film of 1988.

Combo of some stunning animal direction (courtesy of ace trainer Thierry Le Portier) and exotic period setting somewhere in French colonial Indochina charms when the quadripeds stalk the action but creaks when the bipeds open their mouths.

Yes, it's all terribly hokey. But once you accept the premise as a conceit that allows the director, Jean-Jacques Annaud, to offer an intimate, utopian vision of the animal kingdom, Two Brothers succeeds as an inspirational pastorale and passionate moral brief for animal rights and preservation.

The tiger footage in Two Brothers would make for a solid nature documentary, but because the animals are shoehorned into a narrative, they've been anthropomorphized to death.