RESIDENT EVIL: RETRIBUTION.

I say it with almost every review, so why stop now? I see every one of these in theater, regardless of knowing I'm not going to love it. I've never played any of the games all the way through, but I do know about a handful of the characters and the mythos. Not like it matters, since the movies are hardly anything like the games. Every film has made more money than the last while getting worse than the last (though, and I can't believe I'm saying this, with Paul W.S. Anderson back in the director's chair, Afterlife was kind of a step up from Extinction). Anderson returns again for this one, but will this be yet another step up?

The film picks up exactly where Afterlife left off. Alice (Milla Jovovich) has supposedly killed Wesker (Shawn Roberts) and saved Claire Redfield (Ali Larter), K-Mart (Spencer Locke), and Chris Redfield (Wentworth Miller) from the Arcadia ship. But then a mind-controlled Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory) shows up to attack with Umbrella troops. She's blown into the water and wakes up in a Russian Umbrella facility that tests real-life scenarios in fake re-creations of major cities (and some suburbs) with thousands of clones and some zombies and whatnot. But now Wesker is apparently alive, and he and his right-hand lady Ada Wong (Li Bingbing), who have defected from Umbrella, want to get her out of that facility and to safety so she can help them retake the planet before humans become completely extinct. They send in a retraction team including Leon S. Kennedy (Johann Urb), Barry Burton (Kevin Durand), and Luther West (Boris Kodjoe), whom she met in the previous film. But things get a little more complicated when they run into Becky (Aryana Engineer), a young girl who believes Alice is her mother. And due to the whole clone situation, we also get to see Rain (Michelle Rodriguez), One (Colin Salmon), and Carlos (Oded Fehr) again.

I'll be honest, of all the sequels, this film easily has the coolest concept and story. Granted, it's basically a rehash of the first two films (and there are a lot of connections to both of them). The return of One and Rain hark back to the original film, while Jill takes us back to the second. There's also the return of the Red Queen, which brings us back to the first film, and the idea they need to get out of an underground facility. But they're traveling through "cities" and need to escape before a bomb goes off, much like the second film. Despite rehashing old ideas, it worked, because this is easily the best film since the first one. Though there are still plenty of problems with it that stop it from being as good as the first, and put it closer to the quality of the second.

The story, despite being better and more interesting than others in the series, is very rushed. It felt like the film had just started by the time it was over. I suppose it's a good thing I wanted more, though maybe not so much since I wanted more due to it being lacking. Oh yeah, and Claire, Chris, and K-Mart are nowhere to be found in this movie. I think Claire and Chris are mentioned once (K-Mart never), and it's only when Alice asks where they are, to which I don't believe she gets a response. In essence, this and the last film felt like Anderson is slowly trying to naturally retcon the series... and I would think that's the case... if it weren't for how this movie ends, which seems to retcon a previous retcon. But I won't get into that.

A lot of the issues I had here I also had with Afterlife. For instance, this film has some fantastic action sequences, particularly in the first half of the movie. The entire bike chain/gun fight zombie attack sequence was pretty awesome. But there is just way too much slo-mo in this movie. I think if you cut out half the slow motion in this film, we'd lose 30 minutes of the movie. There were a couple scenes it was used well, but on the whole, it felt like 75% of the movie was in slo-mo. There were also some incredibly ridiculous moments where I felt somebody off to the side needed to press an "Easy" Button, because I kept thinking "Well that was easy." There's one particular moment in the climax where Alice is fighting Jill and she does something you knew was going to happen the whole time... but it's done with such ease that the people sitting next to me actually said "why didn't she do that hours ago?" Just way too many cop-out, easy defeats in this film for my liking for what are essentially "boss battles." There were also a ton of really illogical, almost physics-defying situations in some action sequences. And I don't mean like kung-fu kind of things, but like "cars don't work that way" or "bullets don't work that way" or "bodies don't work that way" kind of situations.

Anyway, as I said earlier, I've never really played through the games, but I know enough to know what fans will be pissed about and what fans will let slide. I think, for instance, they might let Barry's portrayal by Kevin Durand slide. It was average enough. And Li Bingbing was freakin' hot in this movie. Ada Wong doesn't do a whole lot, and she has some nice action scenes, but damn was she nice to watch. The biggest blunder here is Leon. Holy Hell was that a disaster of a character adaptation. They got a guy who looks very little like the character, made his hair look freakin' stupid (because that style doesn't fit that actor's face), and then make him one of the least interesting characters in the movie. Leon has pretty much become the face of the games. He's a badass. And here... he was lame background fodder that couldn't even get the look right, much less the personality. I'm also relatively sure they don't know what Las Plagas are (the whole Moscow/Las Plagas attack sequence is probably the worst scene in the film).

The acting is your typical Resident Evil fare. Shawn Roberts' Wesker is campy as hell, and fun for being so. Sienna Guillory can't act her way out of a paper bag (she is awful). I wish Kevin Durand had been given more, because he had potential to be a fun, snarky character. Milla Jovovich is the same as in every other movie. To be honest? This movie belonged to Michelle Rodriguez. She stole almost every scene she was in. And she was basically playing two roles here--a good guy and a bad guy. And the good guy character was so against her type that it was actually refreshing and really funny (and I'm sure purposefully done as such for that reason). She had some good lines and is really entertaining.  I'm glad they brought her back, because she really was the best thing in this movie. Though the little girl, Aryana Engineer (coolest name ever) was actually a pretty good little child actor, especially for this series.

One more thing I want to mention before wrapping this up. The film starts out really solid. We start with a slow motion sequence being played in reverse of the attack on the Arcadia during the opening credits. It's done very well and looks really cool. But then that ends and we cut to what is apparently a pre-requisite for every movie in this series: the Alice Recap. I wonder if Milla is getting tired of giving the same damn speech in every film, just slightly altered to include new events from the previous film? And it goes on for about 5 minutes this time before cutting back to the opening sequence, but playing it forward this time (and shortened, thankfully) before opening up in the suburbia sequence shown in the trailers. So yeah, the first five minutes are really cool. The five or so that follow are very been-there-done-that (literally). And then it goes back to being decent again, at least for a little while.

This is a very, very flawed movie... but I still actually liked it. There is a lot about this movie that doesn't make sense. Plot and logic holes galore. And there's too much slo-mo. But I still really liked the idea behind the story, and some of the action was pretty dang cool. And Michelle Rodriguez was great. If you're a fan of the series, I don't think this one will disappoint too much (unless you're a major Leon S. Kennedy fan). But if you're not a fan of the series, this one won't convert you. Would have liked more, but still pleasantly surprised.


I Am McLovin!

(P.S. The 3D actually wasn't that bad. There were some sequences when it was actually used well. Not the greatest 3D film ever, but better than most these days.)

V.G. Movies #18: Resident Evil: Apocalypse.

[Welcome back to the Evolution of Video Game Movies series. Every week, I will be moving forward through time, starting with the earliest and ending with the most recent of video game movies. I will be detailing the histories of the games and how the films came about, and both my and fan reaction to the adaptations. Practically all of my background information is either common knowledge or from Wikipedia. So without further ado, let's move on to the next film on the list.]

THE HISTORY

While discussing the first Resident Evil film, I mentioned that, although the first film has almost nothing to do with the games, the sequels attempted to tie themselves a bit more into them. And none of them tried to do this harder than the first sequel, Resident Evil: Apocalypse. But before I can discuss that, you should first hear about the stories for some of the other games.

The second RE game follows two of the series' most popular characters, Leon S. Kennedy and Claire Redfield. Raccoon City has been overrun by the T-Virus, turning the majority of its population into zombies. The game is split into two halves, depending on who you want to play the game as (meaning you'd have to play the game twice, once as each character, to get the full story--but you're doing different things, so that makes it more entertaining... though there is the ability to affect the other character's playthrough depending on how you do things, giving you up to four different scenarios and multiple variables... but I'm getting off topic). Leon's section of the story isn't currently relevant (as neither he nor Ada Wong, a woman he meets up with, are in this particular film--I'll be getting to them later this year). Claire is also not in this film, and I'll talk about her next time, but she runs into a little girl named Sherry, the daughter of scientist William Birkin--the man who invented the G-Virus (a new strain). Both teams find and protect Sherry and different times, and also discover she herself is kind of infected herself (by her father).

The third RE game, entitled Resident Evil: Nemesis, reintroduces us to former S.T.A.R.S. member Jill Valentine as she attempts to escape the infested Raccoon City. She ends up stumbling across some special forces guys who work for Umbrella named Carlos Oliveira, Mikhail Victor, and Nicholai Ginovaef. And all of them end up occasionally battling against an "organic bio-weapon" called Nemesis, who is programmed to go around killing off all S.T.A.R.S. members. After a bunch of stuff happens (including Nicholai revealing himself to be a bad guy), they discover that the US government is going to nuke Raccoon City to stop the infestation and cover it all up.

While technically the fourth game in the series, Resident Evil: Code Veronica is not considered the fourth (as there is a completely separated RE4, which coincidentally won tons of awards the year it came out). It's a bit of a sequel to the second game, following Claire's storyline from that game. But all you need to know here is a family that is introduced known as the Ashfords who experiment with a different form of the T-virus.

Now that we have that out of the way, I can discuss the actual movie. As I said in the last article, each sequel actually ended up making more money than the last. But does that mean this film is any better, especially since it's tying itself into the games? Well...

THE FILM

I've seen all the RE films in theater, but I only own the first two. So that will at least give you some inclination of how I feel about this particular installment. However, I haven't watched it in years, so my thoughts might have changed. So what do I think now? Well, the story this time is basically picking up right where the first film left off. Alice (Milla Jovovich) has woken up in a Raccoon City facility, and the city itself has been overrun by the T-virus. And while there is supposedly an evacuation going on, a young girl named Angela Ashford (Sophie Vavasseur), daughter of Umbrella scientist and T-virus creator Dr. Charles Ashford (Jared Harris), has become lost in the city. He ends up contacting some of the only survivors to help him find his daughter before she (and the rest of them) is killed. The rest include Raccoon City police officer Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory) and news reporter Terri Morales (Sandrine Holt); Umbrella soldiers Carlos Olivera (Oded Fehr) and Nicholai Ginovaeff (Zack Ward); and Alice and small-time crook L.J. (Mike Epps). Unfortunately, zombies and a soon-to-hit nuke aren't the only things they have to worry about. Alice's acquaintance from the previous film, Matt, has completely transformed into a monstrous weapon called Nemesis, which has been programmed to destroy all the remaining S.T.A.R.S. members before wiping out all evidence with aforementioned nuke.

Granted that I haven't played any of the games, none of the adaptation stuff bothered me. Of course, I know enough to know that the movie missed the atmosphere of the source material completely. The film is not suspenseful, not even horror. It's an action movie, pure and simple. In fact, you could easily argue that all the movie is is a sequence of action set-pieces... and that's about it. Now, some of those set-pieces are cool, others are decent, and some are just silly. But for the most part, the action generally works.

What doesn't work are the characters (for the most part). For one, there are way too many primary characters, too many for there to be any good focus or character development. You come to know or care nothing about any of these people. Alice you only know because of the first film, but she's a totally different entity here due to the experimentation on her. Jill is just... there for fan service. She looks like the character in the games, and that's it. There is no depth to her whatsoever. Carlos is likable, but just like the others, you know nothing about him. L.J., too, is likable as the comic relief. You know the least about him, but at least he serves a purpose (one liners and laughs). He has the best lines in the movie.

And then there are the plot holes. I guess I never picked up on these before (except one--how the hell did they build that gate perimeter around Raccoon City in like... a few hours? In fact, almost every five minutes you're left with another "How did...?" question. The characters do things they shouldn't, either because the actions themselves are stupid or because there should be absolutely no way the characters would have the prior knowledge to begin this action in the first place. I don't think I've ever seen so many plot holes or logic gaps in a movie before.

On the plus side, the movie did have some good ideas. Turning Matt from the first film into Nemesis was nice, giving a good emotional connection with Alice for this film. Also, the film gives us an origin to the T-virus itself with the Ashfords (which are a kind of mix between the Ashfords and the Birkins of the games).

But there were just too many things that didn't make sense. Too many plot/logic holes. The characters were pointless, as essentially Alice could have done the entire mission on her own. There didn't need to be 3 completely different groups brought in just to find one little girl, especially when they knew exactly where she was at to begin with. I would have accepted Carlos, too, since he's at least useful. The visuals are decent, and the Nemesis doesn't look too bad. If you're going to watch this, do it for some intriguing action set-pieces and a few fun one-liners from L.J., but that's it. If you think about anything in this movie, it'll be lost to you.


Feed Me, Seymour!

V.G. Movies #15: Resident Evil.

[Welcome back to the Evolution of Video Game Movies series. Every week, I will be moving forward through time, starting with the earliest and ending with the most recent of video game movies. I will be detailing the histories of the games and how the films came about, and both my and fan reaction to the adaptations. Practically all of my background information is either common knowledge or from Wikipedia. So without further ado, let's move on to the next film on the list.]

THE HISTORY

One of the first of its genre, Resident Evil basically founded the "survival horror" genre of gaming. Debuting on the Playstation in 1996, RE was a total success. The game was originally called Bio Hazard in Japan, but due to some copyright issues, the name was changed in America. Capcom (the game company) held a contest with its employees to come up with a new title, and Resident Evil was born ("Resident" due to the fact the game took place in a mansion... get it?).

The basic idea of the original game is pretty simple. Raccoon City has been facing some strange issues lately, particularly with murder and cannibalism. So the police force sends their Special Tactics And Rescue Service (S.T.A.R.S.) team to investigate. But when the first "bravo" team disappears, the Alpha team is sent in to investigate. After a vicious dog attack, the team is forced to take refuge within a nearby abandoned mansion. The remaining Alpha team consists of Barry, Chris, Jill, and Wesker (three of which are major and popular characters for the remainder of the series). You quickly discover that all sorts of creatures and monsters (including zombies) are all over the place, thanks to some biochemical testing funded by the Umbrella Corporation--with a chemical known as the T-Virus. You also discover medical labs underground, a monster called the Tyrant, and that Wesker is a double agent for Umbrella (and he becomes one of the primary villains of the series, no matter how many times he's killed).

Eventually some sequels came out, introducing the world to other popular characters and storylines--but I'll get to some of those later. As for now, all you need to know is that the games were popular enough to warrant a film adaptation. And who had his name attached to it? None other than the director of Mortal Kombat, the only real moderately successful video game adaptation thus far. Yeah, it's Paul W.S. Anderson.

But what happens when you remove every character from the games and only keep in the idea of a mansion, zombies, a few key monsters, and, of course, the Umbrella Corporation? A movie that doesn't resemble the games whatsoever--yet managed to spawn one of the most successful video game movie franchises of all time (the only one, thus far, where each film has made more money than its predecessor). But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, let's take a look and see how well (if at all) this first film works.

THE FILM

This is a film that splits people, especially fans of the game. I never really got into the games, but I can appreciate its story and characters. And really, when adaptations take nothing but a title and a few namesakes from the source material, I can agree that it's bothersome. But is Resident Evil an exception to that rule? After a computer system called the Red Queen (Michaela Dicker) kills everyone inside the Umbrella Corporation's underground "Hive," a special military unit owned by Umbrella is sent in to see what went wrong. This team includes One (Colin Salmon), Rain (Michelle Rodriguez), Kaplan (Martin Krewes), and a few others. They also happen to run into Alice (Milla Jovovich), a young woman with amnesia who woke up in the mansion that resides over the Hive. They also find a couple men--Matt (Eric Mabius), who claims he's a cop, and Spence (James Purefoy), who seems to have a connection to Alice. And, of course, they eventually discover that the T-Virus had been released within the compound and now there are a bunch of zombies and a monster roaming about.

Despite having practically zero connection to the games, I'd say this is still a fairly decent flick. The majority of the movie, particularly the first 30-40 or so minutes, has a lot of great atmosphere. It sets up a creepy, mysterious vibe that raises the tension slowly, building to the big moment where the zombies finally show up. There are also a number of memorable moments in this portion of the film, including the laser room. Everything is set up nicely with a good mystery, decent characters, and a nice overall vibe.

The next portion of the movie isn't all that bad, either. This would be the non-stop action part of the film. You have zombies (of both human and dog variety), guns blazing, blood dripping, music blaring, and hearts pounding. It has some good suspense and decent thrills, even if moments such as the mid-air dog kick set up Alice to evolve into a character who would nearly ruin the film series. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Where I feel the film stumbles is in its third act. You discover the twist to the story... what really happened behind the scenes and how a number of the characters are connected. Some motives are a bit shaky, and some of it feels a bit contrived. Then you have the "big bad" of this film--the Licker. The CGI for this creature leaves you a bit wanting, and it feels maybe only a sole generation better than the CGI Reptile in Mortal Kombat. Fortunately, you don't have to see it for very long. The acting gets a little wonky here, as well. And up until this point, the film could have easily played as a prequel to the original game. But then the scientists come in and you have the double ending that sets up two things in the inevitable sequel. You have Matt (spoilers!) becoming Nemesis, and then you have Alice waking up in the abandoned Raccoon City cocking her gun (very Super Mario Bros.-esque). Despite the cool factor, it's at this point you realize that any sequels are not going to be straight adaptation of the games.

On the whole, it's really not that bad of a flick. In the world of video game adaptations, I'd actually say it's kind of underrated, bogged down by what its sequels became (similar to, say, the Saw series--though at least that series managed to have a functional continuity and didn't have to retcon itself all the time). But again, I'm getting off topic. Its soundtrack, produced in part by Marilyn Manson, is very fitting and well done. If you want to see your favorite characters in these films, watch the sequels (...if you must), but this one works as an original story based in the same world as the games. Could it have been better? Definitely. But for what it is, it's fine.


I Am McLovin!

RESIDENT EVIL: AFTERLIFE 3D.

So, I've seen all the Resident Evil films in theater, and I didn't feel like breaking the routine now. The story picks up where the last one left off. Alice (Milla Jovovich) and her clones are going to take down the Umbrella Corporation, and they start with the Japanese headquarters. Unfortunately, the new head of the corporation, Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts), has injected himself with the T-Virus much like had been done to Alice. And then he injects a cure into Alice, removing all her powers. After a crash, Alice decides to head to Alaska to find Claire Redfield (Ali Larter) and K-Mart (Spencer Locke), who were the only survivors of the previous film. But only Claire is there, and she has amnesia. So flying down to L.A., the two discover a handful of survivors hanging out in a prison, including Luther (Boris Kodjoe), Bennett (Kim Coates), Angel (Sergio Peris-Mencheta), Crystal (Kasey Barnfield), Kim (Norman Yeung), and Chris (Wentworth Miller)... yes, that Chris (if you've played the games or know them). So now they gotta try to find a way to escape and get to safety.

Let me say, I really like the first film, despite it being nothing like the games (but I'm no purest in this regard). The second film is more like the games (well, it has Jill and Nemesis), and it was alright. The third film is just... eh. I didn't care for it. But this one is probably my favorite since the first (though I still like the first one better). And, ironically, this one is supposedly the most like the games (Resident Evil 5 in particular, I believe, as well as some Code: Veronica). Was it great, though? No. So let's get into why...

First, some good stuff. The opening is pretty cool with a mysterious Japanese woman just standing in the rain before attacking, and then flashing years later to the attack on Umbrella with all the clones. The action is fun, but it does take its toll with a bit too much slo-mo. However, there are some excellent visuals. The movie has some great visuals and cinematography (though some poor CGI with the dogs later on).

The acting isn't too bad. I mean, it's a Resident Evil movie. But I must say, Shawn Roberts as Wesker, at times, reminded me of Gob Bluth (of Arrested Development) trying to be Agent Smith (of The Matrix). Imagine that as you will. And, unfortunately, there's no Milla Jovovich nudity like almost all the other films.

I quickly want to mention the 3D. It's the first film since Avatar to use this special form of 3D filmmaking. But it wasn't all that spectacular. I mean, it was alright, but nothing mindblowing. How To Train Your Dragon actually had a better use of 3D. But again, it was alright. It didn't take anything away from the film.

I really don't know what else to say about the movie. Good action, but sometimes too much slo-mo. Decent acting, but some cheesy stuff sometimes. Great visuals/cinematography. And... I really have no idea what else. It had faults, probably even more than I mentioned, but it was entertaining. And by the way, if you see the scene right after the credits start... that is who you actually think it is, despite it looking nothing like she did before. And I thought that's a pretty cool little extra scene, despite it confusing everybody.


I Am McLovin!

(P.S. Did anybody else think Chris was played by Karl Urban at first?)

A PERFECT GETAWAY.

I wasn't sure from the trailers if I wanted to see it or not (I like Steve Zahn, Milla Jovovich, and Timothy Olyphant), but then I found out it was written and directed by David Twohy, who also wrote/directed one of my favorite horror films, Pitch Black (and later The Chronicles of Riddick). It bumped up much higher on my list. And then I started reading really good reviews for it, which bumped it up more. So I finally went and saw this yesterday.

A Perfect Getaway (double entendre and all) is about newlywed couple Cliff (Steve Zahn) and Cydney (Milla Jovovich), honeymooning in Hawaii. Along the way they meet creepy hitchhikers, Kale (Chris Hemsworth) and Cleo (Marley Shelton). And not long after that, they meet the slightly strange, but mostly endearing couple Nick (Timothy Olyphant) and Gina (Kiele Sanchez). But then they discover that on the neighboring island of Oahu, there was a murder, and the police are looking for a man and woman couple as suspects. And with all three couples having been on Oahu on the day of the murder, it could have been any of them... though nobody's about to come out and point fingers.

The movie isn't the horror/slasher flick that the trailer makes it out to be. This film is more of a slow-burn paranoid thriller with the action picking up in the third act. And although it does make you second guess yourself on who you think the killer is, your first instinct is probably right. I figured it out just by watching the trailer... but that doesn't necessarily ruin a movie for me. I did the same thing for the film Identity, and I still really liked that movie. Though, while you might guess the whodunit, you might not figure out the whydunit. I felt that really helped bring it up a few notches to save it from overall predictability. The writing of the film was so detailed and great that everything is kept ambiguous and out in the open to keep you second guessing yourself, only to figure out later how all of those second guessing moments fit together with the plot. And, again, the WHY was so much more interesting than the WHO (I'd actually go out on a limb and say that David Twohy knew this from the start and focused on the story more than relying on the whodunit twist).

As for the actors, they all did a pretty good job. Milla Jovovich has some good moments, and Steve Zahn really does a bang-up job. The other couple (Marley Shelton and Chris Hemsworth) aren't really in the movie all that much, but they do an all-around decent job of being creepy. But the true scene stealer is Timothy Olyphant. Seriously, this guy really stole the show. He was charismatic, interesting, and sometimes a little strange. But he really pulls it off and becomes the real star of the movie.

Something else I really liked about the movie was its meta-qualities. It's a movie that talks about movies, as Zahn's character is a screenwriter. And, of course, like in Scream, there are things that are discussed about the genre at hand that must always happen (red herrings, the second-act twist).

As I said before, the movie is a slow-burner. It builds up the suspense and paranoia (and the clues) until the third act. And then, after the red herrings and the second-act twist, the movie really shifts into gear. And it really changes in all respects. The action in non-stop, keeping the adrenaline pumping until the end. Even the gore--as before this point, there really isn't any at all--picks up. It's not overwhelming for people who can't handle gore; it's not Saw-level or anything. The film also becomes rather stylish. There are some flashback moments that explain scenes earlier in the film, and then there are some other flashback moments that take us before that to do a bit of character building and other explanations. And all of these moments are done in a silvery overtone that looks pretty cool. Then, when the chasing starts, there's an awesome bit where the screen keeps shifting in these wipe-kinda things that looks really cool and was a great little bit of editing. And then the overall use of the camera in general.

Overall, the movie was very good. It had beautiful shots of the island, great camera and editing work, good-to-great acting, some really fun characters, and great writing with a surprisingly intriguing story (once it all comes to light). The only things I could point out as negative were that it is a slow-burn and therefore has moments that almost drag before picking up again, as well as that the movie is a bit predictable. But again, I think the movie and story was good enough to trump the predictability. So really, it was another good job by Mr. Twohy.

A Keanu 'Whoa'

DVD Review: The Messenger: The Story Of Joan Of Arc.

I am a major Luc Besson fan. I love almost anything he touches (directs, writes, produces... though mostly directs). As such, there are few films that he's made/directed that I haven't yet seen. The Messenger was one of them, and I'd been wanting to see it for years now, but never getting around to doing so. And now that I have... well, I wish I could take it back.

Joan (Milla Jovovich) is a peasant girl who, as a child, saw her village (and some of her family) destroyed. Now about 17, she believes God has chosen her as a messenger to speak with the rightful king of France (John Malkovich) and lead his army to victory against the British to reclaim French territory. And if you know the story of Joan of Arc, you know it isn't exactly a comedy.

And that's the biggest fuck up (pardon my French... and my bad puns) of the film. The tone is just terrible. During even the most serious of moments were strewn with most likely unintentional comedy that ruined most of the scenes. And then there were the scenes with intentional comedy that mostly didn't work. Tonally, the film was an utter mess.

And that leads in to how we feel about Joan (whose name sounds more like John through the film). Among other things, which I'll get to momentarily, Joan is portrayed as a flat-out lunatic. I know that in history, the controversy is that either Joan was really having visions and hearing God's message... or she was shizophrenic and just a strongheaded crazy lady. Besson really goes with the latter, and (again, bad pun coming) that really ruins what should have been the message of the film. Joan is so obviously insane that she's more of a joke than a martyr. By the time the movie ends and you see the title about how she was eventually canonized as a saint, it feels more like a mockery ("This crazy-ass chick is a saint?"). It was just a weird juxtaposition of information. It would be like having a movie that shows the true nature of Bin Laden and how he believes God told him to kill the infidels and take back his rightful land or something. But then he's arguing with himself the majority of the time, twitching... and then the movie ends with him dying in a cave... it fades to black... and you see "He was later canonized." The movie was supposed to be this ultimate tragedy, and it wasn't.

But Joan had other issues, and I'm not sure if I should put the blame on the acting or directing (as much as I'd hate to). When you first see Milla-Joan, she's this meek young woman who is near tears the entire time. Then there's this huge time lapse with no montage or training sessions or anything, and you see her on a war horse with a sword, and her personality has completely shifted. She's become this strongheaded, arrogant, crazy woman. And she got on my freakin' nerves. Seriously, there's a scene about halfway into the movie where she gets shot by an arrow. I know she's not gonna die because, well, there's still half a movie left and I know my history. But when she got shot, I couldn't help but do a mental cheer and wish that she would. Either the way Milla played her or the way Besson directed her was horrible.

Not to mention, with only a few exceptions, the casting of the film was awful. I've already discussed Milla. I like Malkovich, but a French king with an American accent surrounded by other people with accents? Why not just pick a French person? Or at least have Malkovich attempt an accent. And that was a big issue for most of the cast. It was a weird mix of nationalities (that should have been one nationality), and they didn't even attempt to make it more authentic. And then, of course, there's Dustin Hoffman, who I didn't realize was in the movie. So when I saw him near the end, I was like "what the hell? Dustin Hoffman?" He acted his part very well, but the character was too vague. It's listed as her conscience, but you don't know if it's that or Jesus/God or Satan or who. And his character brings in some of that awkward comedy (the 'where did the sword come from' scene... funny, but out of place).

For editing, it was hard to tell a lot of what was going on sometimes. One minute Joan would be one place, the next she'd be in a completely other place with things moving like a dream sequence. But then it turns out that it wasn't a dream sequence, and you're left confused. Though that could be an issue of scripting, as well. And I do think the script had some issues.

Overall, the movie is just a mess. My opinions aren't completely negative. There was some good cinematography (at least at the beginning) and some good (although miscast) acting. The fight scenes were decent, though incredibly fake-looking when it came to the blood or gore. It got overly cartoonish and sometimes slapstick at times, which just goes back to the tone. But now I'm going back to the negative during my positive section. I know this movie has a lot of lovers, especially at places like imdb. But although I have my deep love of Besson's films, and I'll still continue to see any others he puts out, I have to say I was highly disappointed in this one, and it took quite a bit not to just turn it off.


The Zed Word