Rating: 
Summary: Different? Yes. Way under-rated at 3 stars? Yes, yes, yes!
Review: This film moves me. It IS different from so many other movies ( that, in all fairness, are striving to send a message far different from "Beau Travail").No frontal nudity, no gay sex, no IV drug use, no child abuse, no car chases, no gunfights, no Greek Idol pretty boys, no trite dialog.....just a believable human drama, well acted, and shown with absolutely stunning photography of Djibuti, Africa. Not to give the plot away, but I thought the focus of this film was the internal struggle of the Claggart character as he tried to come to terms with just why he hated the Billy Budd character so much. And unlike the Claggart on the "Rights of Man" who is killed by Billy's blow, this French Foreign Legion sergeant lives to regret the emotions that overcame him. (Personally, I'm still working and thinking on that aspect of the story. It's not all spelled out for you like most American movies.) This deserves, in my view, a full FIVE STARS. If "Art" can be defined as "something that makes you think", then "Beau Travail" passes that test for me. Three stars? Absolutely not! This story deserves a much more appreciation and a much higher Amazon rating.
Rating:
Summary: Simply Brilliant
Review: This is a beautiful film that trusts the audience to understand connections between the characters that are not explained in typical narrative and conversational scenes. Even though I would argue that Moby Dick is the Great American Novel, I felt that Melville's overwrought novella, Billy Budd, was so drearily overwritten that ultimately Melville's meagre psychogical insight evaporated from the overegged prose. This film does just the opposite: the scenes of the African landscape and the legionaires' bodies are not there for simple aesthetic enjoyment (although they are gorgeously rendered), but are expressionistic land- and body-scapes, the tableaux upon which the story is written. As such, it's a film that isn't about words (quite the opposite of Melville's dire verbosity in Billy Budd), but about a vocabulary of desire (that transcends, although it also reflects, such categories as colonialism and homosexuality). The film is Claire Denis' masterpiece to date, the best adaptation of any book I've seen, and has the most beautiful ending of any film I've seen. I'd keep on writing and gushing hyperbolic about the film, but I think you get the point; it's one of my favourites.
Rating: 
Summary: PEANUTBUTTER SANDWICH, ANYONE??
Review: This is definitely not a take off on Herman Melville's "Billy Bud" and I cannot for the life of me see any resemblance at all. What this is, is an agonizing, angst, totally 100% testosterone movie that got away from the Director Claire Denis. There is no point in trying to convey a story-line to you as there was no script, no script, no acting, no character to follow, no hero, only sweaty Legionnaire's running around the desert posing sometimes naked and bare chested. And even this is a bore.
I really liked Denis' Chocolat, it had character plot and great acting, but she was directing mostly women. She did not know what to do with all these men in a desert, running around looking at each other as if in a daze. And the ending was really too much for anyone to bare. Heh, the scenery was OK!
ciao yaaah69 (one*)
Rating:
Summary: not for idiots
Review: Those reviewers who gave this film low ratings should stick to watching Braveheart and Sleepless in Seattle. Sure, the film is visually beautiful but definitely NOT in a picture postcard way. For the director the unifying theme is 'rhythm' - the rhythm of men working in the desert engaged in seemingly futile work, the rhythm of the disco, the rhythmic patterns in a carpet made by the local women. The hero's faith in the rhythms of military life is undermined by envy and desire for the new recruit. The film is about the fall from faith in the conventional, the sinking into the abyss and finally the redemption of both characters. Every detail is artful in this film and it's worth watching it two or three times to pick up on the good stuff. And I agree with a previous reviewer - the ending is one of the best ever.
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