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The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc
Metascore
54 out of 100

Mixed or average reviews - based on 33 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 12 out of 33
  2. Mixed: 18 out of 33
  3. Negative: 3 out of 33
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  1. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Michael Wilmington
    100
    Such a sour, mindlessly inflated experience that seeing it may temporarily put you off historical movies.
  2. TNT RoughCut
    Reviewed by: Matt Kelsey
    80
    If all history lessons were this stylish, elementary school would have been a better place.
  3. L.A. Weekly
    Reviewed by: F. X. Feeney
    80
    The Messenger may be a caricature of theology, but then Besson is a cartoonist of genius.
  4. Seattle Post-Intelligencer
    Reviewed by: William Arnold
    75
    The horror and spectacle of medieval battle has never been re-created on film before with such ghastly beauty.
  5. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: J. Hoberman
    70
    Inexplicable as it is, the Joan of Arc story encourages contemplation of ourselves as a species. The Messenger is more apt to prompt meditation on the nature of show business.
  6. Film.com
    Reviewed by: Sean Means
    70
    While The Messenger feeds our appetite for visual panache, it starves the soul.
  7. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Kenneth Turan
    70
    Blends great cinematic energy with an awkwardly mixed multinational cast and aggressively over-modernized dialogue.
  8. Time
    Reviewed by: Richard Schickel
    70
    A lively, nutty film, one full of clumsy, clanging battles filmed by the gifted, eccentric Besson with bloody brio.
  9. Variety
    Reviewed by: Todd McCarthy
    70
    The lack of a plausible leading lady is enough to sink what is otherwise an eye-catching, although heavily '90s-style, telling of one of history's most frequently filmed stories.
  10. Mr. Showbiz
    Reviewed by: Michael Atkinson
    67
    It's Besson's stunning visual fluency that takes center stage, and in the end, that's not quite enough.
  11. Philadelphia Inquirer
    Reviewed by: Desmond Ryan
    63
    You might be occasionally dumbfounded by The Messenger, but you won't be bored.
  12. Baltimore Sun
    Reviewed by: Ann Hornaday
    63
    The story's more sober elements are regularly leavened by hip visual flourishes and even some quiet comedy.
  13. Film.com
    Reviewed by: Peter Brunette
    60
    It's all overblown: too much music, too much cutting, too much zooming, too much computerized special effects, too much clanky symbolism that never works.
  14. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Janet Maslin
    60
    Though Ms. Jovovich's performance dominates the film, she remains pedestrian and underwhelming.
    All this publication's reviews
  15. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Desson Thomson
    60
    Never was the case for psychotropic medication more acute than in Jovovich's performance.
  16. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Lisa Alspector
    60
    Luc Besson--and Andrew Birkin wrote the pandering, adolescent screenplay for this pseudosubversive hagiography, and nearly every scene screams out its sensationalist intent, though few actually achieve the status of spectacle.
  17. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    50
    The movie is a mess: a gassy costume epic with nobody at the center.
  18. Christian Science Monitor
    Reviewed by: David Sterritt
    50
    Besson's account of the Maid of Orleans presents itself as a celebration of a martyr's faith but shows more interest in the violence and hatred that surrounded her life.
  19. Miami Herald
    Reviewed by: Rene Rodriguez
    50
    May be the grandest looking film ever made on the subject, but it lacks the most essential element of all: passion.
  20. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Jonathan Foreman
    50
    Besson is unable to weave the comic scenes together with the serious gory ones, so both seem increasingly jarring and unbelievable.
  21. San Francisco Examiner
    Reviewed by: Walter Addiego
    50
    By casting model-turned-actress (and his now-estranged wife) Milla Jovovich as the Maid of Orleans, Besson gives us an over-amped spectacle with an annoying, sometimes ridiculous cipher at its heart.
  22. USA Today
    Reviewed by: Mike Clark
    50
    Has a three-way split personality, which happily includes an action-packed middle to ease the pain of its early protracted exposition and later action so slow that you'll be asking "Gotta match?" to the person next to you.
  23. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Maitland McDonagh
    50
    Bresson's vision of the miseries of 15th century life -- which was undeniably nasty, brutish and short -- comes dangerously close to the comic squalor of "Monty Python and the Holy Grail."
  24. Salon.com
    Reviewed by: Charles Taylor
    50
    A truly vulgar movie.
  25. Dallas Observer
    Reviewed by: Andy Klein
    50
    The ludicrous casting of Hoffman is just the fatal bit of kindling on this Joan's fire.
  26. Film.com
    Reviewed by: John Hartl
    50
    It's a painful sit from beginning to end.
  27. Slate
    Reviewed by: Eliza Truitt
    50
    Milla Jovovich is not quite up to the task of playing a nuanced and thoughtful Joan.
  28. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Owen Gleiberman
    42
    There's precious little in Luc Besson's solemnly inflated, battle-weary historical epic.
  29. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Marc Savlov
    40
    Besson loves his violence almost as much as he loves his leading lady.
  30. Rolling Stone
    Reviewed by: Peter Travers
    40
    For the 148 minutes it takes "The Messenger" to deliver its message, being John Malkovich or Milla Jovovich is really no fun at all.
    All this critic's reviews
  31. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Jack Mathews
    38
    Jovovich, Besson's 24-year-old ex-wife, hasn't a clue how to project shadings, interior emotions, character or personality. Everything's in a full screech.
  32. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Jay Carr
    38
    A lot of striking pictures in this would-be feminist "Braveheart," but a film that's pretty flat and earthbound because of the limitations of the figure at its center.
  33. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Edward Guthmann
    25
    Isn't some sober history lesson that bogs down in long speeches and tedious facts. It's about style, it's about fashion, it's about rock 'n' roll busting out in medieval France.
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