The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999)

When Luc Besson took on the legendary life of Joan of Arc, he did so with a big budget and a cast of thousands. The movie, unlike his previous movie, failed to light up American audiences while French audiences loved it. It didn't make a lot of money like Fifth Element did or even Lucy later on, yet it's an underrated movie about a famous woman who became a role model for generations of French women. The soundtrack is good, and the shots are amazing. Unlike his previous movie, this one is rated R, just like The Professional, yet it deals with religious themes.

Was Jeanne d'Arc a supermodel? Did she, at least, look like one? Miss Jojovich does, and perhaps this is the reason why she can't keep her mouth closed - she thinks she is in a sensual performance for a TV ad. She is blonde in the beginning of the movie, yet she has dark-brown hair in the end, quite appropriate for a supermodel. Together with the ultra-British English of all actors and the use of modern jargon and slang, these are items that add to this total disaster I had to witness during 2 and a half precious hours of my life. Besson should be ashamed of signing such a film. Not being able to follow Victor Fleming in his 1948 version of the story, duly and truly metaphysical, he cooks up a hard-to-digest mixture of baby and middle-aged Christs, angels, demons, ghosts and the like. To say nothing of Jojovich's hysterical shouting, which adds to her very poor acting. All my sympathy to Cassel and the few others who give a decent performance, but this does not save the film.

1429. While the war between France and England (the Hundred Years War) appeared settled in 1420, in England's favour, the death of King Henry V of England reignites it. England occupies large areas of France and appears set to take the whole of it. Into this moment of crisis rides legendary Joan of Arc, a teenage girl who claims to be lead by divine visions.A pretty bad telling of the Joan of Arc story, for so many reasons. Most noticeably, the performances are almost universally hammy. Milla Jovovic only got the part of Joan because she was married to director Luc Besson at the time, and looked the part. Her acting is all over the place.John Malkovich is okay in his role. Dustin Hoffman can't act badly, but here he gets a character that makes for some of the weirder, more pretentious moments of the movie.Supporting cast largely overact: French soldiers are generally gung ho, laugh-in-the-face-of-danger heroes, English are brutal, one- dimensional villains. With such bad acting on such a wide scale one can only think that this is how Luc Besson wanted them to act.On that note, a very irritating aspect of the movie is how the French are portrayed as wonderful heroes and the English as mindless thugs. The whole movie amounted to nothing more than pro-French, anti- English propaganda. I know the director is French, but I didn't know the English and French were currently at war...Quite a lot of padding too, drawing out the movie. So many scenes that seemed unnecessary.About the only positive parts are the battle scenes. These are well staged and are quite gritty and realistic.

The film opens terribly with small, fast-scrolling revisionist history in an ersatz medieval script superimposed on a nearly featureless map of a northern coastline, presumably somewhere in Europe. French place names compete for our attention as blood seeps over the obscure territory, presumably representing English invasion. All this when a simple date would tell us as much as we need to know. Then there is a wonderful series of establishing shots, rendering all the previous text unnecessary. Here is medieval agrarian France, here is the title character, here, her conflicted relationships with the Church & God, the ambiguity of what is real, what is visionary. A melange of differing accents alerts us that we are dealing with an ensemble cast. Then John Malkovich, Faye Dunaway, and Dustin Hoffman remind us again. Americans in medieval France...hmmm. Of the three, Dunaway seems the most at home in her role. Hoffman...does anyone ever forget he is watching Hoffman? Jack Crabb is the last role I saw as a character and not Hoffman-in-a-role. My point isn't to disparage his acting, but that the casting director has placed too-high-profile actors in supporting roles. With Hoffman, the question is never what will the character do next, but rather, what will Hoffman do with the character. Milla is nearly perfect for the part - wild eyed volatile delusional virginal zealot, not much different from her roles in other films (Fifth Element). But one almost waits for her to go off on a rant in Ukrainian. Has a French actress ever played this role in an English language film? I liked the props and most of the sets. Much of the photography is beautiful, but there is a visually disturbing lack of roads leading to some of the castles. And in the end, the story runs down without reaching a memorable conclusion. Or maybe I dozed off.