Rating: 
Summary: Passionate and Inspiring!!!
Review: Well, i think this one is GREAT! You feel the passion of Joan. . . Any time i need inspiring, i watch this, it's like Braveheart...
not without faults, i didn't like toward the end, implying she was inspired by the devil...and SOME like that other Joan movie better, but i think the joan in it was not so good an actor...but then some loved it! i've seen it twice now, to try to see what i missed, but... have seen The Messenger 8 times.
Can't say enuf good things about the Messenger, but watch them all and decide for yourself.
Rating: 
Summary: Wrong Message
Review: What a waste of resources...This biopic is completely by-the-book, telling the story in an academic, uninspired, predictable way. The characters are all cardboard, and lead Milla Jovovich is over-the-top and not credible as Joan of Arc. This movie has no spark or life whatsoever, moving at a snail`s pace and failing to engage. The settings and costumes are decent, but that`s all there is to find here.
Director Luc Besson also made the useless "The Fifth Element", and the style-over-substance perspective of that movie is present here, too. This is just a bunch of random fight sequences and melodramatic moments that go nowhere and generate a messy cinematic experience. A lackluster movie and one to avoid.
Rating:
Summary: Sick & Twisted
Review: Clearly the producers set out to make a mockery of Joan of Arc and they accomplished that goal rather well. While the costumes and the music are rather good, the script and the actors play their roles over-the-top and it makes for a silly sight.It seems that only revered Christians can be so badly depicted in Hollywood. I recommend a pass on this hate-mongering.
Rating:
Summary: True to History?
Review: Maybe this film is not historically accurate. Then again, maybe it is closer to the real thing than most want to realize. Like the life of Jesus, Joan's life is vague on the printed page, and Hollywood has had a history of its own trying to fill in the gaps. No two films about her are alike. So I guess it comes down to the viewer's faith, whether Joan was a saint or just a simple peasant girl who inspired a nation. This film presents a more human approach to her story, and whether it is historically truthful is beside the point. After all, this is a Hollywood film, not a documentary. And as a Hollywood film, it works very well for me. The look of the movie is stunning, and that alone should make it worth, at the very least, a one-time rental. But the acting is so fine, with Milla Jovovich doing a superb job of creating a most difficult role. If a more religious, faith-based treatment is required by the viewer, stick with the cardboard performance by Ingrid Bergman.
Rating:
Summary: A TRUE EMBARASSMENT FOR ALL INVOLVED
Review: Hard to believe this was directed by the guy who did 5th Element & The Professional. The acting is just the worst. No attempt made at all to get the feel of the period in the manner(ism)s of the "actors". Besson must have thought costumes are enough to convey a historic epoch. WRONG. Question is was he directing this at all or just taking pretty pics of his wife. Plus there isn't even the slightest attempt to stick to history. Might as well have called this Joan of Detroit.
Rating: 
Summary: Overly dramatical
Review: Milla Jovovich's supposedly great performance is certainly not comaparable to any one else's...but that is because she hams her performance up beyond any other actress I've seen. The movie's highlights are obviously the period pieces and battle scenes, but the film soon tries to outdo itself and overdoes the whole dramatic affects. Milla pretty much moans most of her lines, clinging to the king's legs and having an orgasm, then later after her first battle darting around the battlefield panting, "We have sinned! We have sinned! We must pray!" In fact, if you watch this movie, just stop after the first battle (the castle siege), the movie pretty much ends being interesting thereafter, and you can't really like Joan that much. I'm sure she was a devout woman, but I'm sure she was also aware battle and war had to be done to save her country. When Joan is locked up for the trial scene, the movie takes a very odd turn - Dustin Hoffman comes out of no where and pretends to be a faraway spirit trying to add doubt in Joan. It's an odd role for him, it's an odd character, and it makes the movie feel disjointed. Perhaps the final moment of the film's dramatics is the end of the movie itself. Joan being lit on fire as "O Fortuna" plays, and a close up of a cross nearby. If you want to see "O Fortuna" done right, watch the movie "Glory." I had heard a lot of good things about this movie, the director, and Milla, but I found none of it. The movie makes Joan a crazed, unbalanced character barely sure of herself, and the storyline tends to jump from a point to the other. The only likeable character to me was the Duke of Burgundy, who gives a line I readily use in real life: "I believe in neither God nor the devil. That way, I am never disappointed."
Rating:
Summary: Very historical
Review: This movie combines aspects from the true story of Joan of Ark into a fighting fest and I love it. The battle scenes are nice and gore with blood coming from every part of those peoples bodys. But, it does try to tie history in it. Joan of Ark is potrayed to be a nice warrior. Millia Jovovich is a great actor. This movie got me very interested in Joan of Ark. This is one of my favorite movies ever!
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating
Review: I love this movie. It is a shame that so many others cannot put aside their nitpicking (Joan didn't find a sword in a field, she didn't see visions of Christ but of saints, etc.)to fully consider the fascinating question: were the voices Joan heard divine, or a product of her imagination? It is a similar question to the one The Crucible asks (did those girls see visions or were they making them up) although that movie (and history) answers that question without much doubt. This is a movie, folks - take the lack of historical accuracy with a grain of salt and consider the question. I like this movie because it makes Joan human like the rest of us, and at the end it leaves you asking yourself, what do I believe and why do I believe it? And that is always a good question to ask. This is one of the best movies I have seen - it is beautiful, it is graphic, it is raw, it is real, and it should lead a person willing to be open-minded to introspection. I like it especially because it really doesn't answer the question in the end. You have to make up your mind for yourself. Were those voices divine or were they all in Joan's head? Maybe they were both. I'd give it more stars if I could.
Rating: 
Summary: Divine Message or Hysterical Delusion?
Review: It is 1425, and France is a corpse-strewn battlefield. Since 1337 the land has been ravaged by the Hundred Years War between the English, the French, and fickle barons and dukes willing to shift their loyalties for gold, titles, and land in Perfidious Albion, north of the icy Channel. English soldiers, brigands, and madmen roam the countryside, burning, looting and pillaging everything in their path. It is a time of frenzy; it is a time of ecstatic vision. It is a time in which the messianic Joan la Pucelle, later known to history and fate as Joan of Arc (played in wide-eyed wonder by the gorgeous Milla Jovovich), emerged, born into an ensanguined world and bearing the word of God Himself on her lips to the future King of France, the hapless Dauphin Charles. It is this fiery, faith-driven, brink-of-madness world which Luc Besson attempts to conjure up in the uneven "The Messenger", which shares a little of the fevered madness of its wild-eyed heroine. What is the true nature of the Divine? How does He talk to His servants? How do you know the voice of God is really the voice of God---and not something else, something malignant, the voice of a demon or possibly madness? To his credit, Besson plunges deep into this dilemma, and the opening sequences in which Joan's young visions come heralded by unearthly winds and a vision of a glowering, leering (and ultimately aging, decrepit, and senescent) Christ are unsettling and horrible, suggesting that the source of her zeal may not be divine in nature. Besson has always had a flair for visual artistry, and "The Messenger" is no exception. The imagery, assisted by veteran cinematographer Thierry Arboghast (who worked with Besson on "The 5th Element" and also served as Director of Photography for the lush "Ridicule), is rich, striking, captures the feel of the 15th century battlefield, and throws the viewer into battlefields and siege trenches fertilized with gore and muddy pastures turned into rancid abattoirs with the blood of the dead. The battle sequences are handsomely mounted, vivid, compelling, and brutal, particularly the Siege of Orleans. A sequence introduced by a shot from a trebuchet (a piece of medieval siege artillery) is at once remarkably faithful and dramatically awe-inspiring. Fashion model Milla Jovovich does a fine job with a challenging role, and makes "The Messenger" her movie; her expressive face says more with a glance or a turn of the mouth than lesser actresses could with 100 pages of dialogue. John Malkovich is at his purring, brooding best as the Dauphin; Faye Dunaway brings history to life as the devious Yolande D'Aragon; Tcheky Karyo provides the heavy weapons support and uniformly stolid jawline as the phlegmatic, doubting, faithful Dunois; Vincent Cassel seems to be having the time of his life as the laughing Gilles de Rais; and Dustin Hoffman has a shadowy, skulking, gloriously contemporary little part in tempting, tormenting, and confusing Joan. For all of its pageantry and scope, this is a decidedly intimate little film that has far more to say about the nature of Faith and Things Larger than Oneself than it does, necessarily, about the historically enigmatic and ambiguous St. Joan. This is what ultimately makes Besson's sins (all those of excess, the very best kind) forgivable, because this final inquisition between Joan and her hooded tormentor makes the film so much more accessible to all us, beset as we are by our fears and doubts. The final question, once all the fire and blood and plunder and ruin of "The Messenger" succumb to night and silence, is this: do we hear the voice of God because we finally allow ourselves to listen---or because we so desperately want to hear?
Rating: 
Summary: Mixed Results
Review: Besson's film on the legendary Joan of Arc leaves mixed results. Although he presented an original angle in showing her to be less than heavenly inspired, Besson has seriously and uneffectively distorted several documented facts about Joan of Arc. First of all, Joan of Arc was never raped; her title, "La Pucelle D'Orleans", means "The Virgin of Orleans." All historical accounts suggest that Joan of Arc was soberly persistent in her pleas for the Dauphin to give her an army but she was never the delusional psychotic as shown in the movie. Her visions were inspired by the Saints and not by Christ Himself. All accounts are conclusive in that Joan of Arc was leading as a symbol of inspiration to the army and never once raised a weapon against the enemy: she never shed any blood. Finally, Joan of Arc never reneged her faith or retracted her statements about her divine mission: that's why she was put on the stake. The film is unique in showing Joan of Arc more as the political puppet that she was in real life and how she became a liability after the crowning of the Daupin in Orleans. The film also shows Joan as a person suffering from a dissociative disorder rather than being a divine messenger. John Malcovich and Faye Dunaway play their roles well as the Dauphin and the Regent Queen. The battle and siege scenes are interesting but perhaps a little exaggerated. The movie is perhaps worth renting once but this is certainly not the best rendition on this most intriguing of Christian saints/martyrs.
| 
