Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Highly Overrated But Still Good

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

First, when Joan talk to the king telling him with slow voice her visions the music is louder than her voice just like in those cheap you tube videos. She is conveying important message and you can hardly hear ti because the BS music levels and effects are overpowering her voice. God talks to her but is not telling her what BS she is doing during the siege and she get hit deep in the lung with arrow. She pulls the arrow starts to bleed to death. No one takes her armor so that she is naked and the physician try to heal her wound. Next morning she is just fine and screaming for an attack as if nothing is wrong with her lung. Utterly unreal. Disapointing as heck

This is not a movie I would have chosen, but Director Luc Besson has "Valerian" coming out soon, and this movie was mentioned in a review. There are reviews written by people with far greater knowledge. I have a casual understanding of the story of Joan of Arc, and know less about the events of the time. As a movie, I enjoyed this immensely. This movie gets the people right.Milla Javovich hits it perfectly. She is vulnerable while unstoppable. She is full of doubt, but completely certain. And during the trial, she can do "caged animal" with just her eyes. I can't imagine anyone else pulling this off. Milla does unapologetically devote better than anyone since Audrey Hepburn in "The Nun's Story".The supporting cast did a stellar job. There are a lot of medieval movies and TV shows, and most of them aren't believable because people aren't stern or earnest all the time. "Game of Thrones" is fun to watch because sometimes people laugh, and sometimes they fight. If you ever saw a medieval movie, and wondered what the guard standing next to the door does when the camera and the king aren't there, this movie has it. Some reviews called that filler, but it was fun and humanized the soldiers.I gave it a 10 because it showed people in a way different than other medieval movies. Again, I don't know if the historical facts are correct, but I would not be surprised if the people acted just like they are portrayed.

This French big budget attempt to compete with Hollywood is for the most part a disappointment. Certainly, it's not as bad as it could have been. The production values, for one thing, are solid; you really feel that you're getting a fairly realistic glimpse into the dirty and primitive medieval past. The battle sequences are also well done, showing that warfare has always been a hell on Earth. The movie also attempts to make the interesting argument that maybe the real Joan of Arc had not gotten the actual word of God... though this isn't examined to as great a depth as I would have liked. But that's a small problem compared to others found in the movie. The main problem with the movie is that for the most part it's too long and too slow, though there are curiously some important details here and there that are not examined in enough depth, not just the one I mentioned earlier. Another problem is that Joan in this movie often comes across as abrasive and obnoxious. I can believe that the attempt was to make her human and flawed, but director Luc Besson went too far in this direction in my opinion. Not a terrible movie, but you'll be tired and wishing for it to end some time before the closing credits start to roll.

"The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc" gives no subtleties in its presentation of Joan of Arc. Its version of Joan comes from the theory that she had schizophrenia, to the exclusion of any other possibility. However, in "The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc"The script was badly written, confusing, and pulled the audience out of the suspension of disbelief. The writers ignored certain facts, and skewed others. Most importantly, they invented scenes and dialogue that 1) would be out of character for Joan and 2) we know for certain that we do not know. For example, in the scene when Joan rushed to her parish church and sloppily drank of the Eucharist––she never would have done that. The historical Joan had too great a religious respect to commit a deadly sin such as that. Second example, the writers include the dialogue wherein she tells the Dauphin about her Revelations. No one knows what her Revelations were, so the writers of that scene had no basis of that whatsoever; the influence of their schizophrenic agenda is clear in the dialogue and Milla Jovovich's acting.The theory that Joan had schizophrenia is a legitimate argument. However, I found this film's presentation offensive and inadequate because of its lack of historical and realistic respect. "The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc" set its theory up as the final and only theory, and bashed all other theories and monarchies and histories before it, seemingly because they existed before this film was made.