Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
In 1429, a French teenager stood before her King with a message she claimed came from God; that she would defeat the world's greatest army and liberate her country from its political and religious turmoil. As she reclaims God's diminished kingdom, this courageous young woman has various amazing victories until her violent and untimely death.
Luc Besson's Joan of Arc is a visually energetic but narratively uneven take on the familiar historical epic. Milla Jovovich brings raw intensity but the screenplay oscillates awkwardly between visceral battle spectacle and muddled spiritual introspection, particularly the jarring late-film 'Conscience' sequences with Dustin Hoffman that feel tonally dissonant. The cinematography delivers kinetic, heavily stylized battle sequences that impress in moments but border on MTV-era excess. The story itself is well-trodden historical ground handled without particular freshness or insight, and the film's theological ambivalence about Joan's visions undercuts rather than deepens its dramatic core. The ending, depicting her trial and burning, carries genuine weight and is the film's most straightforward and effective passage.