Subway

Rating:
Summary: Beats any 90's Hollywood film. But who's surprised?
Review: Good off-beat European film with interesting view of Paris. Just a generally different point of view than American formulaic film-making. Definitely not a film for the average American viewing audience which obviously has an average IQ of less than 90 judging by what movies sell in the States.

Rating:
Summary: Offbeat euro-comedy full of laughs and great Parisian shots.
Review: Chirs Lambert, ala highlander fame wreeks a wickedly funny flight through the Paris Metro. Good date movie, a must see for anyone recently returned from Paris as the scenes of the metro will bring back fond memories.

Rating:
Summary: DVD is very disappointing
Review: This is the lowest quality DVD conversion I have seen to date. The source looks like it must have been an old ex-rental tape, complete with fuzzy 4:3 picture, occasional tracking glitches, and snowed-out frames. The disk is Region-0 NTSC, but for a world-wide format disk it is surprisingly skimpy on language options. The only audio track is the dubbed English, and there are no subtitles in any language. It does contain a scene index, but there are so few points defined that you may need to revert to the FF/REW buttons to find the point you're looking for.
The disk contains a series of trailers for what seemed to me to be children's films - cartoon features etc. As this disk is certificate 'R', the choice of these is bewildering.
The film itself is still a gem - great characters, good humour, but it would have been nice to see some of the footage which was cut for the original release (40 minutes of it from what I've heard). I don't know if there are any plans for a Director's Cut edition, but I suspect this is hardly the immortalising version Luc Besson would want.

Rating:
Summary: No I don't want to
Review: This is the only film I have ever watched that didn't feel like I was just watching a film. That is the best recommendation I could give anything I feel.

Rating:
Summary: Luc at me!
Review: I once had an argument with a somewhat obtuse university chum, as to who was the greatest living filmmaker working in France today. I argued Jean Luc Godard, he opted for Luc Besson. His argument was that Besson had made French cinema cool, whereas Godard had merely invented and continued the stereo-type of the pompous, black & white art drama. I quickly added that Godard's most pompous films were actually in colour and he was, of course, a buffoon to ever think that the man who made the Big Blue and the Messenger could ever compete with the man who gave us The Little Soldier, Alphaville, Band of Thieves and A Woman is a Woman.

Now, Besson has made some great films, notably Nikita, Leon and the Fifth Element... but the jury is still out on whether or not he can cut it within the lexicon of great European auteurs. Certainly, a film like Subway, which seems to act as a cinematic catalogue of all things 80's, does little to sway the argument, offering up a senseless and idiosyncratic plot, punctuated by horrible synth music, car chases, shoot outs and two-dimensional characterisations. The film still has it's ardent devotees though, and in fact, one glance over the comments here will show that the majority of critics are fans of the film and mr. Besson... but for me, something just didn't fall into place. My academic associate tried to tempt me to the pro's of the picture, by claiming that Besson was attempting a post-modernist re-write of the thriller genre, with an 80's art deco design. But to me, this seemed even more pretentious than the mere notion of a soulless, stylish action caper... which is, as far as I'm concerned, what Subway represents.

To be honest though, there are a few interesting moments to be found - whilst Besson tries out a few techniques that would later re-appear in his better films - but on the whole, the plot is simply an excuse for the filmmaker to navigate his camera around the actors in a way that looks self-consciously 'cool', whilst aping that earlier French hit Diva, with it's use of composition, lighting, editing and (in the original French version) sound design. But it's all so decidedly awkward with Besson really striving to replicate Diva's bold style as well as certain characteristics prevalent in French cinema from the 60's and 70's. However, if we are to compare Subway to Godard's Alphaville (as I did in the abovementioned debate) you will see the creation of a fully-functioning underworld that self-referentially borrows from other texts, not simply cinematic, but also religious, political, musical and poetic, in which a history and sense of morality are established VS. Besson's shallow, glossy, Miami-Vice-a-like!

Some of you may enjoy it - that is - if you are willing to disengage all sense of rationality and accept a story that wanders too often into the realms of two-dimensional stylistic pastiche, whilst those of you seeking a cogent plot line, detailed characterisations and a sense of narrative flow, may be more interested to seek out a more enjoyable and fulfilling work (or even that troika of Besson classics noted towards the start of this review). So, whilst Besson may have made French cinema cool... did he ever change the way we perceive the medium, in the way that Godard did? No! I think not.