.com
----
The Professional
Luc Besson (The Fifth Element) made his American directorial
debut with this stylized thriller about a French hit man (Jean
Reno) who takes in an American girl (Natalie Portman) being
pursued by a corrupt killer cop (Gary Oldman). Oldman is a little
more unhinged than he should be, but there is something genuinely
irresistible about the story line and the relationship between
Reno and Portman. Rather than cave in to the cookie-cutter look
and feel of American action pictures, Besson brings a bit of his
glossy style from French hits La Femme Nikita and Subway to the
production, and the results are refreshing even if the bullets
and explosions are awfully familiar. --Tom Keogh
The Fifth Element
Ancient curses, all-powerful monsters, shape-changing assassins,
scantily-clad stewardesses, laser battles, huge explosions, a
perfect woman, a malcontent hero--what more can you ask of a
big-budget science fiction movie? Luc Besson's high-octane film
incorporates presidents, rock stars, and cab drivers into its
peculiar plot, traversing worlds and encountering some pretty
wild aliens. Bruce Willis stars as a down-and-out cabbie who must
win the love of Leeloo (Milla Jovovich) to save Earth from
destruction by Jean-Baptiste Emmanuel Zorg (Gary Oldman) and a
dark, unearthly force that makes Darth Vader look like an Ewok.
--Geoff Riley
The Big Blue
A hit in Europe but a flop in the U.S.--where it was trimmed,
rescored, and given a new ending--Luc Besson's The Big Blue has
endured as a minor cult classic for its gorgeous photography
(both on land and underwater) and dreamy ambiance. Jean-Marc Barr
is a sweet and sensitive but passive presence as Jacques, a diver
with a unique connection to the sea. He has the astounding
ability to slow his heartbeat and his circulation on deep dives,
"a phenomenon that's only been observed in whales and dolphins
until now," remarks one scientist. Kooky New York insurance
adjuster Joanna (Rosanna Arquette at her most delightfully
flustered and endearingly sexy best) melts after falling into his
innocent baby blues, and she follows him to Italy, where he's
continuing a lifelong competition with boyhood rival Enzo (Jean
Reno in a performance both comic and touching). Besson's first
English-language production looks more European than Hollywood,
and it suffers from a tin ear for the language. At times it feels
more like an IMAX undersea documentary than a drama about free
divers, but the lush and lovely images create a fairy tale
dimension to Jacques's story, a veritable Little Merman. More
dolphin than man, he's so torn between earthly love and aquatic
paradise that even his dreams call him to the sea (in a sequence
more eloquent than any speech). Besson has expanded the film by
50 minutes for his director's cut, which adds little story but
slows the contemplative pace until it practically floats in time,
and has restored Eric Serra's synthesizer-heavy score, a slice of
1980s pop that at times borders on disco kitsch. Most
importantly, he has restored his original ending, which echoes
the fairy tale he tells Joanna earlier in the film and leaves the
story floating in the inky blackness of ambiguity. --Sean Axmaker
Subway
This dark and highly stylized French import directed by Luc
Besson (The Fifth Element, The Professional) concerns an
enigmatic safecracker played by Christopher Lambert (Highlander)
hiding out in the Paris Metro system from a gangster. While
living in the underground and eluding both gangsters and Metro
he meets up with a group of colorful and quirky
subterranean inhabitants eager to help him and start a rock band.
All the while the safecracker blackmails a rich woman (Isabelle
Adjani) with whom he is in love. Meant to be a tongue-in-cheek
commentary on urban life, the film works better as a light
freewheeling entertainment, with well-constructed fast-paced
action sequences and a breezy sense of humor about itself. Subway
is an intriguing diversion and a chance to see the cutting edge
of modern French moviemaking. --Robert Lane
The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc
1999 may be remembered as the year of Joan of Arc: NBC created a
miniseries in her honor, Carl Dreyer's long-lost The Passion of
Joan of Arc was discovered in a mental hospital, and Facets
re-released Jacques Rivette's Joan the Maid. Luc Besson rounds
out the corpus with his stylistic and vaguely heretical
grand-scale feature, The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc.
Besson (La Femme Nikita, The Fifth Element) challenges
established notions about the Maid of Orleans as he creates a
decidedly more human heroine than have previous biopics. The
story line is the same--a young, illiterate peasant girl
convinces the dauphin of France to give her an army, and she
leads them to victory in Orleans, only to be burned at the stake
for heresy--but Milla Jovovich, in the title role, is a woman
possessed. Her influences are less than heavenly; as a child she
witnesses the murder of her sister by the English, a death caused
by the sister's giving her hiding place to young Joan, which
causes an intense desire for revenge. Yes, God still speaks to
Joan, but even this is undermined, as Dustin Hoffman, playing The
Conscience, questions her motives. Cinematically, The Messenger
is stunning, with fantastical sequences of Joan in communication
with higher powers. Yet the graphic violence (scenes include
random decapitation and a dog gnawing on a body); the uneven
accents, which make it difficult to tell who is fighting on which
side; and the rewriting of lore may make this version of Joan of
Arc appeal only to Besson fans. Jovovich is convincing, and while
at times the film may drag (at times you wish they'd hurry up and
burn her), it is a remarkable and inful retelling of a
well-known piece of history. --Jenny Brown
La Femme Nikita
French director Luc Besson (The Fifth Element) broke the
commercial taboo against female-driven action movies with this
seminal, seductively slick film about a violent street punk (Anne
Parillaud) trained to become a smooth, stylish assassin. Though
it as, in the end, to little more than disposable pop, the
film has a cohesiveness in style and tone--akin to the early
James Bond films--that gives it a sense of integrity. Parillaud
is compelling both as a wild child and chic-but-lethal pro
(trained in good manners by none other than Jeanne Moreau).
Tchéky Karyo is also good as the cop mentor who develops feelings
for her. --Tom Keogh