Grade: B+

Verdict: In this wonderful animal-adventure movie, the beauty is the beast.

By ELEANOR RINGEL GILLESPIE
Cox News Service

Along with Antonio Banderas' Puss In Boots in "Shrek 2," Kumal and Sangha are the coolest cats at the movies this summer.

They're the charismatic stars of "Two Brothers," Jean-Jacques Annaud's tale of two tigers separated as cubs and what happens to them in the hands of humans. As in Anna Sewell's famed Victorian horse story "Black Beauty," they come in contact with good people and bad, with the latter far outweighing the former.

Guy Pearce ("Memento," "The Time Machine") stars as Aidan McRory, a Great White Hunter in 1920s French colonial Indochina (now Cambodia). He's less interested in hunting tigers than he is in hunting antiquities hidden in ancient abandoned jungle temples that he can sell on the black market. Still, he's killed his share of big game animals and has become somewhat famous for his books about his experiences.

He's also inadvertently responsible for the cubs entering captivity. Initially, both are treated kindly. Kumal, the shyer of the pair, is briefly taken care of by McRory, who feeds him honey drops. And Sangha, the bold cub, is adopted by the son (charming Freddie Highmore) of a local French administrator (Jean-Claude Dreyfus, channeling Peter Ustinov).

But Kumal ends up in a circus, where his trainer uses whips and abuse to get him to jump through flaming hoops. Sangha is shipped off to the poorly kept royal menagerie of a very round and very spoiled potentate called His Excellency (Oanh Nguyen), where he's trained to be a killer.

The movie is breathtakingly beautiful. Annaud spent months in Southeast Asia, filming in places like Angkor Wat and Siem Reap. He captures the lush exoticism of the jungle, where sacred ruins jut out of the billowing green canopy of trees and plants with an ancient stubbornness. There is an otherness to this place that's as threatening as it is seductive.

The tigers, who get (and deserve) above-the-title billing, are every bit as beautiful as the landscape. The cubs are Disney-cute, while the young adults have a sleek, rippling allure that's mesmerizing. Annaud uses real animals, not CGI effects, and the impact is, in its way, more powerful than the tidal waves in "The Day After Tomorrow" or the tumult of spaceships in "The Chronicles of Riddick."

Aside from its obvious appeal for animal rights, the movie also takes a sideways slap at crooked local leaders who allow their country's heritage to be plundered for a few bucks.

And Annaud takes a few shots at game hunters who think killing an animal somehow reinforces their manhood. When His Excellency wants to go hunting, a tiger (actually, the cubs' mom) is trapped in a large hole, then lifted out out and deposited in the grass about 10 feet in front of the chubby despot, who shoots and still misses. "If we'd taken him fishing, he would've fallen out of the boat," mutters the disappointed French official who needs to stay on His Excellency's good side.

Nobody but Annaud makes movies like this, and it's possible no one else can. His pictures range from "Enemy at the Gates" to "Seven Years in Tibet" to "The Name of the Rose," but the film most people remember is 1989Ős "The Bear," another foray into the heart and mind of a wild animal. Kumal and Sangha are slightly anthropomorphized, yet they retain their innate dignity and tantalizing wildness. They truly are tigers burning bright, and not even Harry Potter's wizardry can top the mystery in a tiger's eye.