Dante 01 (2008)

Too much mysticism and symbolism destroys a potential masterpiece. Marc Caro took top actors and put them in a very promising environment: a lonely space station with psychotic prisoners. But then, things go downwards. Too many repetitions of the same emotions, unexplained narratives, personalities that are at once interesting but without proper development. The end is very bad too and not even a budget cut by 50% can explain that. The movie wanted to be intelligent, make You think, but the mixture does not work, they do not need science fiction elements to show messianism and the topos of shouldering the burden of evil. Dante 01 is one big disappointment. Any other similar production like "Event Horizon", "Resident Evil" or even "Ghosts of Mars", "Mutant Chronicles" or "Doom" are more fun to watch.5/10

Smoke, sit back and hold on for this ride. If you can figure out all of the hidden meanings in this movie you can't help to experience anything but greatness. Pure good and pure evil struggling against each other until an ending that left me awestruck, the 2 powers coming together in unison to form Earth. If you are not one quick to judge, willing to watch a few times in order to understand and open your mind, you will see. I believe that these days too many people don't question and have lost open mindedness and the herb enables you to release and free your mind in order to understand something that is on a higher plane. This film is nothing less than pure brilliance for those that can see.

I liked the movie for the most part. 10 minutes before the end of the movie I would have given it 6.5 stars.. Now, although I truly have absolutely no idea what was actually happening- it now gets 8 stars for that ending. That infinite audio 'rise' and the unexpected visuals completely blew my mind!! What I'm thinking is that those energy starfish looking things were from another dimension and once he had completely bonded with them he turned into energy and was teleported into their dimension. Really though, who knows.. He could have just been a sacrifice to the energy starfish. OR the energy starfish were the body's natural defence to the nano-bots. OR he was already completely nano-bot saturated/bonded and therefore would have had a wireless connection to calm/update/program the other nano- bots in the other people..

I pulled this one out after reading someone's review here.One-- If you pull the DVD via Netflix, you CAN change the language to English, although I am sure that you will notice some of the lines just fall so flat it hurts, but if (like me) you are not a native French Speaker, you will just have let those moments pass. Just try to ignore long complicated lip movements when the actor gives a three-word answer. Plus the Dubbed English is can be extremely FLAT and lacks emotion.The Film is dark, clinically brutal and coherently themed. The scene is an orbital Psychiatric station around some unknown planet named Dante 01. The patients/inmates are all hopelessly criminally insane. And here arrives another patient with a cold-eyed research doctor who begins to conduct not-quite-kosher nanotech psychonueral experiments on the inmates. On board the station already are two resident doctors, one of whom has a dark secret of his own.The Sets are well thought through and definitive. You will feel the close, tight confines of a Space Station and a sense of vulnerability both to space itself, and empathize with the vulnerability of the inmates who seem to be caught in a maze of compartments wherein they are treated more like lab animals than patients.The problem-- and the reasons I rated this a 6 --is the story line. Saint-George's history & origin is vague and not explained. Maybe in the French version there is some side explanation-- but not in the English dub. But if you ignore that omission, the story did move with a rough-edged deliberation that is part intelligent prison-drama and Medical Science Gone wrong, an interesting combo.The new Doctor commences experimental injections on the prisoners with some rather icky internal graphics and outward pain and suffering. At the same time, Saint-George is manifesting some strange 'power' that has an origins with whatever the heck happened to him in the past.As you watch the movie you will be settling into watch what happens when Saint-George's power manifestations begin to go head-to-head with the Doctor's twisted medical experiment. THIS was the script and the imbued storyline for the first two thirds of the movie which makes this movie different from MOST of the Sci-Fi out there.Here is where I downgraded the movie down to a 6. Either they ran out of Time or Money or the good graces of the Producers-- because the ending was just slapped onto the end of this movie just for the sake of being able to say: "The End". One of the inmates acts of his own and accesses the station's system to send it powering out of orbit, then locks the controls. Well. . .he IS criminally Insane. And That's what Criminally Insane people DO.Okay. . .except here's where the Movie ran out of Time or whatever because it goes from being cerebral Sci-Fi and becomes suddenly Brainless.Because it turns out that the only way to stop disaster is to get to the Manual control which is only accessible INSIDE the Prisoner quarters? Oh. . .that makes Sense.And it gets better-- Once INSIDE the Prisoner quarters, you then have to open a conduit filled with BOILING HOT cooling fluid and swim down a corridor to this little isolated room where the EMERGENCY CUTOFF is? Oh that makes even MORE Sense than before. I know and recognize the Mad Engineering Schematic gimmick. Emergency Switches that are ALWAYS located on the OPPOSITE end of a facility or Ship and the ONLY way to get to it is through a tunnel filled with Toothy Alien Monsters? And the only things that makes this gimmick work is that the male viewers usually get to ogle the scantily clad female heroine screaming alongside the hero as they fight their way to aforesaid 'Emergency Switch'.That doesn't happen here, though. So put your beer down.Instead one of the Inmates VOLUNTEERS to dive INTO THE BOILING OIL and swim to the switch. Think 'Deep Frying'.Okay, that's rich! But it's still workable-- if he were to don a spacesuit. . .They ARE on a Space Station after all. And he IS Insane?!?But NO! They rip and cut INSULATION, douse it with water and wrap the fool up from head to toe in foamy strips that will only SUCK UP BOILING OIL Cooling fluid as ANY IDIOT will tell you it would. Think 'French Fry'.But at least they give him strap on Goggles. . .which come off while he's in the boiling oil. I will say that the fellow gave the Director and the audience some heart-wrenchingly convincing SCREAMS before flicking the switch and then dying. Bravo! Bravo! Then the Next Scene has Saint-George outside in. . . a SPACE SUIT! And at this point the movie patently STOPS making sense. Although the Director made an attempt to hypnotize me. . .I think.It didn't work. The End STILL made no sense.But I found the first 3/4 of the movie very memorable, nonetheless. Unfortunately, the ending turned what could have been a truly epic, cerebral Sci-Fi film into a classic with Literary undercurrents into an interesting Saturday night Flop. I say watch this with your Sci-Fi buff friends and have your own Vote competition.Lambert Wilson's talent was wasted here. WASTED.