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Dom Robinson reviews Joan of Arc: The Messenger Distributed by 
Columbia TriStar
- Cert:
- Cat.no: CDR 29081
- Running time: 152 minutes
- Year: 1999
- Pressing: 2000
- Region(s): 2, PAL
- Chapters: 28 plus extras
- Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
- Languages: English, German
- Subtitles: 18 languages available
- Widescreen: 2.35:1 (Technovision)
- 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £19.99
- Extras: Theatrical Trailer, Teaser Trailer, HBO ‘making of’ featurette, Filmographies, Isolated Score
Director:
- Luc Besson
(Atlantis, The Big Blue, The Fifth Element, Joan of Arc, Leon, Nikita, Subway)
Producer:
- Patrice Ledoux
Screenplay:
- Andrew Birkin and Luc Besson
Music:
- Eric Serra
Cast:
- Joan of Arc: Milla Jovovich
Charles VII, Dauphin of France: John Malkovich
Yolande of Aragon: Faye Dunaway
The Conscience: Dustin Hoffman
Dunois: Tcheky Karyo
Cauchon: Timothy West
She had a dream. And it would be to rise up and lead a revolution to protect her country and defend France against the invading Englanders (See! We’re portrayed as the bad guys again!)
Joan of Arc (Milla Jovovich, one-time squeeze of director Luc Besson and also a star in his The Fifth Element) believes she is the French answer to James Anderton and was sent by God as his messenger to make contact with the Dauphin of France (John Malkovich) and set plans in motion to reclaim their country, despite being saddled with a disastrous boyish lesbian haircut. Faye Dunaway puts in another sleepwalking performance, this time as the Dauphin’s doubting mother-in-law, Yolande of Aragon and Joan is guided by a boy from her past for whom is known here as the voice of her conscience, who grows up to become Dustin Hoffman.
Now, let’s backtrack a little here. Was it really a dream or a vision? The moral of this story is that people should never go shouting their mouth off. She envisages that the Dauphin will eventually become the King of France. Big Brother‘s Nasty Nick had visions of who would win the gameshow, but while he escaped with a mere eviction, Joan of Arc was burnt at the stake, in quite a gruesome and realistic fashion depicted here, on May 30th, 1431 at the age of 19.
The film also includes an incredibly gross act of necrophilia early on, a neat moment where someone’s blood gets splashed on the camera, an hour in, and a staggering piece of CGI where a man’s head is squelchingly lopped off in battle.
The film is presented in an anamorphic 2.35:1 widescreen ratio, thus replicating the original cinema ratio, the only way to see the film since Besson uses the entire with of the screen and looks splendid most of the time, although the darker moments suffer a little from artifacts. The average bitrate is 5.52Mb/s, occasionally peaking over 8Mb/s.
The Dolby Digital 5.1, in English and German, is nothing short of spectacular. Battle scenes and Joan’s visions benefit most from the sweeping rear-action sounds as well as the full-on audio experience.
Extras : These start with a two-and-a-half-minute Theatrical Trailer, a shorter 80-second Teaser Trailer – both cropped to non-anamorphic 16:9 – and brief Filmographies for the main players.
The 24-minute HBO featurette contains the usual mixture of clips and chat from the cast and crew and there’s the wonderful addition of an Isolated Score, bringing the mastery of Eric Serra‘s work to the fore.
The disc contains the usual 28 chapters from Columbia. The film is very long though so it should have more – at least 40, preferably. The menus are all static and silent.
There are subtitles in 18 languages : English, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Icelandic, Hindi, Hebrew, Dutch, Bulgarian, German, Turkish, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Greek, Norwegian, Arabic and Croatian.
Overall, this is a very entertaining film but it does seem rather weird when you see English actors playing French soldiers talking in English, in English accents, about wanting to defeat the English. Hmmm…
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
OVERALL 
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.