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Jean-Jacques Annaud, the opulent eye behind La guerre du feu/Quest for Fire and L’amant/The Lover, levels another environmentally pointed message with this family-friendly saga about two tiger cubs separated by human encroachment. You may recall Annaud’s 1988 L’ours/The Bear, where miscreant hunters pursed a grizzly and an orphaned cub. Here too he poignantly renders the beasts’ playful innocence as well as their lethal furry, yet the film lacks the resonance of his earlier work. Guy Pearce, in a thankless role, plays Aidan McRory, a big-game hunter in the early 1900s who treks off to Southeast Asia to collect temple relics (they’re selling like hotcakes at Sotheby’s) and in an act of self-defense kills a male tiger protecting its cubs. One brother escapes into the jungle; the other is enslaved in a circus sideshow. Much of what happens in Two Brothers is manipulative puppetry. Besides McRory and the emissary’s empathetic son (Freddie Highmore), the humans are largely self-interested imps who target the tigers in their avaricious plans. The film does take a few pleasant turns, and the awe-inspiring scene where the mother tiger tries to rescue her cub from the back of a truck (à la Raiders of the Lost Ark) redeems the meandering zoo tour. (109 minutes)
BY TOM MEEK
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