SanEat
A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."
Ariella Broughton
It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.
Geraldine
The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
marsbetr
First of all, this movie is very beautiful to behold. Great cinematography, slick cutting, good capturing of the dynamics of car racing and the events on and around a race track. While this movie is not a major Hollywood production, the director did a tremendous job on blending narrative and real imagery from an actual event, the famous 24 Hours of Le Mans 2002.Years ago, I read a few of Michel Vaillant's adventures so I had a basic understanding of what this movie was about and of course, was keen to see this stuff being adapted. And watching this movie, this is what you really need to keep in mind: It's an adaption of a comic strip which is mostly focused on telling a good action story and less on character development, pace of narration and the like.Some of the scenes are pasted together as they would have been in the comic strip, where subplots are sometimes told within 1-2 pictures. That way, it is fair to say it's a suitable adaption of the original strip, but understandably, not everybody may like it. I read some fans of the comic strip do hate the movie. I can understand this, but admittedly, adaptations are prone to being opposed in general. You simply can't make it right for everybody.The movie mostly suffers from the mediocre script. The writing is blunt at times. The plot comes up with a nice twist (SPOILER: Vaillant in place of Cramer trying to save his dad driving best he could, while Wood fighting him, thinking he's Cramer :)) and most arguably, a better script would have made more out of this. As said, it's a comic strip adaption. Even then, some of the characters are simply non-credible. Esp. Ruth Wong and partly Julie Wood (SPOILER: who acts like the Merry Widow after losing her man in a car accident. And just slapping Cramer for sabotaging her man's car, no comment). All the characters remain flat. Add some 5-10 minutes of extra playing time, a few lines of profound dialog, some strong punchlines and you'd get the movie to where it should be. Not sure if we will see another Vaillant movie. Don't believe it cashed in its expenses. It surely suffered from being under-advertised. Compare this to blockbusters such as Fast and Furious and all its derivatives. For sure it's not worse than these.
siggy_4844
My expectations for this movie were to see familiar comic book characters come to live on-screen and to include great racing scenes. I was a bit disappointed that it did not contain any formula 1 racing scenes which were the main focus in the comic series but I actually liked this movie quite a bit anyways. I watched it in french and didn't understand much of the dialog, interesting enough all of the people in the Leader team spoke English which helped me understand more of the conversations. The action sequences speak for themselves and the emotions of the characters came through clearly enough. The story of the rivalry between the brutal Leader team and the french Vaillante team continues when the Leader's daughter takes over and seeks revenge on the Vaillants whom she blames for the misery and death of her father. Suspenseful racing action, sabotage, tragedy, love and crime drama: this movie combines it all in a fairly well-written story plot (I've seen worse).Having read almost all the comic books when I was a child I remember the characters well and for the most part the movie does them justice although I found several inconsistencies: Ruth was transformed from a caucasion woman with short blonde hair to an oriental with long dark hair(in the comic Ruth had an assistant who looked that way - I assume the director got confused???). And what happened to Jean-Pierre's son Jean-Michel? I don't recall him having a daughter named Laura. And since this was supposed to be 13 years after the original incident with the Leader, Michel should have been married to Francoise by now and have a son named Patrick, so what was he doing with Julie Wood (who btw was the motorcycle-racing sister of Jack "Indie" Wood the young driver who replaced Steve Warson when he went MIA after finding out the truth about Ruth). When you base a movie on a comic book series you should at least get the characters straight (can you imagine the uproar of fans if they would have changed the names of some of the characters in the Superman movies?)With Michel Vaillant they created a mishmash of story lines thrown together from different points in time (afterall the comic book series ran for several decades). In my opinion the title character of Michel was a bit over the top, almost too cocky (he never would have done such an irresponsible thing like driving with his eyes closed in the comic books - KIDS DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME!!!) The cast was well-selected otherwise and it's not the actors' fault that the director and screenwriters didn't do their homework. Even though the movie wasn't entirely believable, at least it was not cheesy like the animated series or live action TV series. One must bear in mind that the movie IS based on a comic strip geared towards kids and therefore reflects that (I used to read some of the stories in a kids comic book collection called ZACK when I was a preteen).Update: I have now watched the German version of this movie and was able to understand the conversations. Interesting enough the people who spoke English in the French version suddenly now all spoke German as well and the dubbing was terrible, I almost prefer the French version LOL. Bottomline: If there ever is a sequel to this movie I sincerely hope that the people responsible will do a better job to stay true to the comic book series.
neil-egan
First of all to gerhard24's comments - the cars at LeMans use normal petrol however, they have a special refueling system with two hoses, one on each side of the car: fuel in one side, air out the other so you're right, they couldn't have refueled at a regular filling station. As for the smoke coming out the front of the Leader: this is perfectly accurate as the Panoz LPM1 (aka "Leader") has it's engine in the front - one of the only racing prototypes at LeMans that does.Anyway, I found the movie really disappointing. I was at LeMans 2002 when the two extra cars ran to film the sequences for this movie. We were all really looking forward to seeing the final result and frankly I was gutted when I did. Lame story with far too many inaccuracies to make it it any way believable: no way anyone could run out onto the track (Odessa) and and and....They missed out completely on building up the atmosphere before the race and from the way it was filmed it looked like only the Vaillants and Leaders were racing.However, in Germany the DVD s well worth buying just for the additional material: making of and a series of complete laps of LeMans filmed from inside the Vaillant (Courage) and the Leader (Panoz). Great stuff! Dump the movie though.
Dockelektro
Well, ok, it's no masterpiece, but I seem to be the only person here that took some enjoyment from it. The comics in which the movie was inspired are not there, I agree, but when you accept it like another movie and not an adaptation, you'll probably like it. See it for the sheer pleasure of seeing a racing competition and a great display of technical achievements, and you won't come out disappointed. This is one of those movies that don't bear a close scrutiny, but that's not the reason why they made it. Good to know that at least it's entertaining, and has some feeling. Sometimes only that makes it worth while.
