What's wrong with this picture? In a word, everything. Watching a buck-toothed, grasshopper-of-a-Joan cavort through the woods for the first twenty minutes was excruciating enough, but when the audience was subjected to perhaps the most gratuitously violent rape scene to grace the silver screen this year, the groans were audible even above the psychedelic medieval soundtrack. A Gallic-looking Jesus stares from his chair in the woods. Then he and Joan cavort some more. Woodstock meets the Thirty Years War. Didn't she see saints? I guess Joan isn't Catholic anymore. Too hard to explain. Joan becomes a woman. Joan goes to war. Her captains are likeable cartoon characters. They disappear midway through the film, and are never mentioned again. The audience, over their initial horror, can only gape, mute. Joan is tried. Joan burns. No one is surprised. We're just glad that the argumentative Dustin Hoffman character won't nitpick anymore. The audience hopes he burned up with her. Didn't France--motivated by Joan's sacrifice--unify and kick those pesky English out? Yes, but Luc Besson apparently didn't find such details worthy of mentioning. But--mon Dieu!--that burning dummy looked so realistic! The movie ends, abruptly. Credits roll. The audience doesn't complain--we're happy to have the lights come up again. Makes it easier to find the exit. Luc Besson has surely been replaced by a pod person with little talent. Save yourself. Save seven bucks. Borrow the video from the idiot (pronounce it the French way, now) who purchases it.
