Rating: 
Summary: Box cover is the most intriguing part...
Review: Do you ever catch yourself watching a movie that hasn't been worth your time, but stick to it through the end 'just in case' and thinking to yourself.... "If this is the end, I'm gonna be mad..."?This is that movie, intensified 100 times. Then again, after an hour you're ready for it to be over so you don't really get mad. I whole-heartedly recommend that you save your time and energy and watch/buy something else. I really wouldn't even recommend renting this one. As others have said, the actual cinematography is nothing to be ashamed of, but its almost like recording the lineolium peel and releasing it on DVD with a half naked guy on the cover. No matter how sharp the image is, there's just no story in front of the camera.
Rating:
Summary: Box cover is the most intriguing part...
Review: Do you ever catch yourself watching a movie that hasn't been worth your time, but stick to it through the end 'just in case' and thinking to yourself.... "If this is the end, I'm gonna be mad..."? This is that movie, intensified 100 times. Then again, after an hour you're ready for it to be over so you don't really get mad. I whole-heartedly recommend that you save your time and energy and watch/buy something else. I really wouldn't even recommend renting this one. As others have said, the actual cinematography is nothing to be ashamed of, but its almost like recording the lineolium peel and releasing it on DVD with a half naked guy on the cover. No matter how sharp the image is, there's just no story in front of the camera.
Rating: 
Summary: Beau Travail is bogus
Review: French movie directors never feel compelled to follow a narrative arc. In this movie, there's no coherent narrative at all. We have endless flash-forwards (or are they flash backs?) and when the final credits come up you are left wondering whether they didn't leave one reel in the can when they transferred this to DVD. The dialog amounts to a few incohate phrases and little human interaction. The scenery of Djibouti is breathtaking, but "Sheltering Sky" is much better. The rigor of French Foreign Legion training (and the consequent impoverishment of the Legionaires intellectual and spiritual lives) is interesting to observe, but this move can't be recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: Wow, had to weigh-in to up the rating
Review: I guess a film (book, artwork...) that creates such a divergence in opinion is one that is worth checking out.
Not a truly difficult story to follow, as was suggested by a few other reviewers. Certainly stark, but it's only like an hour and twenty minutes, not tedious by any stretch of imagination.
I saw this as something of a continuation of the saga Bruno Forestiere that started with Godard's "Le Petit Soldat".
Anyway, no use getting into too much film theory for this movie. It's as beautifully shot as any movie, the ending was about the most intense (though bizarre) few minutes of a movie I can remember seeing.
This isn't "three star" (whatever that means) review.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Movie -- Terrible DVD
Review: I saw *Beau Travail* at the theatres and thought it was excellent. And purchasing the DVD, I still think it's an incredibly good film. However, I'm VERY disappointed in the DVD transfer quality from New Yorker Films. It seems that they transferred a VHS copy to DVD, so the image has lots of visual noise, irritating scan lines, and general poor quality video. The picture tears apart in the action scenes. This film deserves a much better DVD.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Movie -- Terrible DVD
Review: I saw *Beau Travail* at the theatres and thought it was excellent. And purchasing the DVD, I still think it's an incredibly good film. However, I'm VERY disappointed in the DVD transfer quality from New Yorker Films. It seems that they transferred a VHS copy to DVD, so the image has lots of visual noise, irritating scan lines, and general poor quality video. The picture tears apart in the action scenes. This film deserves a much better DVD.
Rating:
Summary: Elegant but Insubstantial
Review: Introspective and subtle, Claire Denis' BEAU TRAVAIL offers a modern retelling of Herman Melville's BILLY BUDD, transposing the tale of an officer who self-destructs through his jealousy of a new recruit to an outpost of the French Foreign Legion. And although the film is elegant in both its simplicity and purity, I myself found it a shade too simple and pure to be completely effective. Still, BEAU TRAVAIL has two things going for it: director Denis' cinematic eye and superior performances throughout. One truly senses the location in all its elemental nature, and the cinematography is remarkable for its restrained elegance. The cast follows suit, with direct and underplayed performances that fold seamlessly into both Denis' atmosphere and the story itself, and the result is often quite stylish. But for all its elegance and style, I found BEAU TRAVAIL too introspective and subtle for its own good; to me it lacks any significant substance, with both story and characters slipping through my attention as easily as sand slips through my hand. While this is doubtlessly part of director Denis' intent, and while I have admired many a film with a notably elusive touch, my ultimate reaction to BEAU TRAVAIL is that it is a rather superficial exercise in style over substance, and I cannot say that it leads me to interest in the director's other work. The DVD transfer is reasonable, if not entirely first rate, and there are few bonuses of any kind. In passing, I also note that BEAU TRAVAIL is often marketed as a film with homoerotic context and imagery, but I personally did not find it so. Final word: worth a look, but not greatly memorable for all that. GFT, Amazon Reviewer
Rating:
Summary: Visually Stunning and Poetic
Review: Just had to throw in my 5 stars as this is one of my favorite films ever, and some of the poor reviews here do not do the film justice. Claire Denis is a wonderfully observant and subtle filmmaker of both land/nature and human emotions. The plot is loosely based on Billy Budd, but especially noteworthy is Agnes Varda's stark beautiful cinematography and Denis Lavant's amazing performance. The final disco sequence is breathtaking, truly one of the best 'performance' sequences ever, and oddly in tune with other acrobatic feats Lavant has displayed in other films (Lovers on the Bridge and Mauvais Sang)
Rating:
Summary: Profound -profoundly bad!
Review: The only thing I enjoyed about this movie is the laugh I got out of reading the good reviews. It reminds me of a scene from the play "Art". I am certain the same type would have raved about the Emperor's New Clothes. Not even a multinational cast of sweating, minimally clothed beauties makes this one worth sitting through. It fails on every front, including homoerotic. The cinematography is incredibly overrated. It's simply not even very pretty and completely devoid of mood, lingering way too long on uninteresting scenes that add nothing to the emotional content of the film. Sure there are a few nice sequences, but MANY that look like random bits from a poorly made vacation video. It's bad even as a travelogue. When people refer to this film as "hypnotic", think coma inducing.
Rating:
Summary: Dull and pointless
Review: This film is excruciatingly dull and pointless. It seems to be about the French Foreign Legion, and an officer's obsession with a young recruit. That's about it.
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