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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.