Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc, The

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

Such a sour, mindlessly inflated experience that seeing it may temporarily put you off historical movies.

LA Weekly F. X. Feeney

The Messenger may be a caricature of theology, but then Besson is a cartoonist of genius.

TNT RoughCut Matt Kelsey

If all history lessons were this stylish, elementary school would have been a better place.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

The horror and spectacle of medieval battle has never been re-created on film before with such ghastly beauty.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

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.

Time Richard Schickel

A lively, nutty film, one full of clumsy, clanging battles filmed by the gifted, eccentric Besson with bloody brio.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Blends great cinematic energy with an awkwardly mixed multinational cast and aggressively over-modernized dialogue.

Variety Todd McCarthy

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.

Film.com Sean Means

While The Messenger feeds our appetite for visual panache, it starves the soul.

Mr. Showbiz Michael Atkinson

It's Besson's stunning visual fluency that takes center stage, and in the end, that's not quite enough.

Baltimore Sun Ann Hornaday

The story's more sober elements are regularly leavened by hip visual flourishes and even some quiet comedy.

Philadelphia Inquirer Desmond Ryan

You might be occasionally dumbfounded by The Messenger, but you won't be bored.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Never was the case for psychotropic medication more acute than in Jovovich's performance.

Chicago Reader Lisa Alspector

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.

The New York Times Janet Maslin

Though Ms. Jovovich's performance dominates the film, she remains pedestrian and underwhelming.

Film.com Peter Brunette

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.

Slate Eliza Truitt

Milla Jovovich is not quite up to the task of playing a nuanced and thoughtful Joan.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

May be the grandest looking film ever made on the subject, but it lacks the most essential element of all: passion.

Dallas Observer Andy Klein

The ludicrous casting of Hoffman is just the fatal bit of kindling on this Joan's fire.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

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."

San Francisco Examiner Walter Addiego

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.

Film.com John Hartl

It's a painful sit from beginning to end.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The movie is a mess: a gassy costume epic with nobody at the center.

USA Today Mike Clark

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.

New York Post Jonathan Foreman

Besson is unable to weave the comic scenes together with the serious gory ones, so both seem increasingly jarring and unbelievable.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

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.

Salon.com Charles Taylor

A truly vulgar movie.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

There's precious little in Luc Besson's solemnly inflated, battle-weary historical epic.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

For the 148 minutes it takes "The Messenger" to deliver its message, being John Malkovich or Milla Jovovich is really no fun at all.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Besson loves his violence almost as much as he loves his leading lady.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

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.

Boston Globe Jay Carr

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.

San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann

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.