Milla Jovovich Movie:

				Salesrank:
		MPAA Rating: R (Restricted) Media: DVD

Editorial Review:
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 insightful retelling of a well-known piece of history. --Jenny Brown

The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc [Region 2] Reviews:
The best movie I have seen.
2009-11-21 - Milla Jovovich looks fantastic and so is her acting. I've never seen a movie that is so believable. The supporting cast is absolutely the best I've seen. I've never heard about most of them but they are great and along with Mill Jovovich make this the best movie I have ever seen. Do yourself a favor and watch this movie. After seeing this by accident I bought all of Milla Jovovich's movies {They, along with all other movies don't come close to this Masterpiece].

Better late than never
2009-11-13 - The Messenger is currently airing on cable TV, and I will confess to being so amused and intrigued by the chunks of Luc Besson's big bellyflop that I was seeing in Cinemax's edited and cropped version that I went out and bought the DVD in order to give this film a proper second look. A decade ago, following the fantastic one-two punch of Leon and The Fifth Element, Besson suddenly seemed like the greatest popular moviemaker in the world. So, back then, I went to see The Messenger with sky-high expectations that were only bound to be disappointed. At the time, the movie seemed not only a pointless retelling of a story that has been filmed countless times but, worse yet, a mere star vehicle for Besson's then-girlfriend Milla Jovovich.

Ten years later, during which Besson, sadly, has been unable to recapture his earlier promise, but during which Jovovich has actually proven her chops as an actress sans Besson, The Messenger really does deserve to be reconsidered. It turns out to be a smartly-mounted, crisply-edited medieval war movie, more entertaining than Braveheart and others in this genre, and its light, humourous style actually seems prescient in terms of some of the less reverent historical epics that have been produced since. John Malkovich, who, back then, just seemed old and miscast as the Dauphin of France, now somehow seems spot on, a most knowing parody of his own egotistical image, and Jovovich, despite her technical limitations, is full of energy and fire and, as always, looks fantastic. There are even amusing echoes of Besson's more seminal work, with the story bearing striking similarities to that of The Fifth Element (beautiful girl suffused with a higher power saves medieval France instead of the world) and Tcheky Karyo providing a bemused sort of Leon to Jovovich's Mathilda on steroids. Besson's Joan of Arc may not be a candidate for cinematic canonisation, but it's a terrific movie that never deserved to be burned at the stake.

Still Looking for the Genuine Joan but entertaining nevertheless
2009-10-07 - As a movie, certainly entertaining, but don't look for anything historical here since it must have been a Joan from an alternate universe being depicted. For example, in this movie Joan has deep angst about her sword she may have found in a field.

While in fact this Sword:

"- --In place of the sword offered to her she described in detail the location and appearance of a sword in the Chapel of St Catherine de Fierbois. It was found deeply buried exactly where she had described and the blade was so covered in rust it would have been impossible for her to describe it without having seen it before. The rust readily fell off when the blade was wiped. -- "

Perhaps this film is a conspiracy of the irreverent, irreligious and atheistic working to "deconstruct" Joan; to convince a modern, uninformed audience she was a raving schizoid lunatic leading the superstitiously ignorant to lucky victory; with a flaming end. Or not.

Aside from that, I found it entirely entertaining filled with arrow sticking battle scenes and screaming mayhem. Once I brainwashed myself into believing that actress Milla Jovovich was portraying a personality from the bizzaro world instead of a real-life historically significant figure, I actually enjoyed the film.

I give it 5 stars minus 3:
1 For Milla Jovovich
1 For the incredible exciting siege sequence
-1 for being magnificently historically inaccurate
-1 For conning me to believe this was a movie about Joan of Arc
-1 For being so unfaithful to her hard to believe true story making up stuff when it's so easy to Google it out the Real Deal otherwise (hmm, insult my intelligence comes to mind...)

Buy it for the two stars though, the siege IS really good...


Fun...But not historical.
2009-09-23 - While the movie proves entertainment if you are looking for a historical movie this isn't it. Joan's talks to G-d and the saints make her seem as if she had a psychological problem, and seveal scenes make her look demonic. While i wouldn't watch this for historical value it is definalitly entertaining.

Pure excellence
2009-08-16 - Truely one of the best Biographical films ever made, ever witnessed on screen. Not very often does an interesting historical charecter show up in cinema, some actors get immersed in the charecters so well, so fine... you just have to believe that you are taken back right there at that very time. 'The Messenger' is one of those films that carry you all the way with it and take you back to its time, the time where a once little girl who turned out to be a rebellious young woman taking charge of the French army. The lead role is played brilliantly by Mila Jovovich, you simply run out of words when it comes to her performence. The pain, the madness, the temper, the true nature of Joan so beautifuly shown by the young actress. The film as a whole leaves you quite sattisfied, the performence, the acting, the directing, timing and a reasonable score. Look forward to some really good performence. It was good to see Pascal Greggory in a very brief role. A fine piece of cinema indeed.