Michel Vaillant (2003)

User Rating:

5.0/10   

Director:

Louis-Pascal Couvelaire

Writers:

Jean Graton (comic books) &
Philippe Graton (comic books) ...

Release Date:

19 November 2003 (Belgium)

Genre:

Action | Sport

Tagline:

No limit

Plot Keywords:

Car Accident | Pigeon | Le Mans | Stopwatch | Podium

Cast

Sagamore Stévenin	...	Michel Vaillant
Peter Youngblood Hills	...	Steve Warson
Diane Kruger	...	Julie Wood
Jean-Pierre Cassel	...	Henri Vaillant
Béatrice Agenin	...	Élisabeth Vaillant
Philippe Bas	...	Jean-Pierre Vaillant
Philippe Lellouche	...	José
Lisa Barbuscia	...	Ruth Wong
Jeanne Mauran	...	Odessa
François Levantal	...	Bob Cramer
Stéphane Metzger	...	Dan Hawkins
Scott Thrun	...	David Dougherty
Agathe de La Boulaye	...	Gabrielle Spangenberg
Stefano Cassetti	...	Giulio Cavallo
Alexandra Tiedemann	...	Agnès Vaillant

Runtime:

103 min

Country:

France

Language:

French | English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital EX | DTS-ES

Certification:

Iceland:12 | Finland:K-11 | Germany:12 | France:U

Company:

Europa Corp.

Trivia:

The film was partly shot during the 24 Hours of Le Mans car race in June 2002. Event organizers added two cars to the field specifically to accommodate the filming but the production had to hire 6 professional drivers to drive the cars during the actual race.

Goofs:

Continuity: When David crashes, the side window on the driver's side is smashed. Just before the car explodes, the window can be seen intact.

Movie Connections:

Version of "Michel Vaillant" (1986)

A visual feast

Michel Vaillant is an incredible, artistic visual feast of a film. It is the sexiest film since Top Gun and it is at once shocking, surprising, heroic and humble. A perfect marriage of big Hollywood action and French artistic quality.

I am the photo editor at two major international fashion magazines and I went together with the head designer of one of them. We were on the edge our seat throughout the film, never knowing what would come next. We appreciated the sensuality of the under-lying love story. While you knew it was there, it was not focused on, there were no gratuitous sex scenes, in fact I recall only one kiss. But you knew it was there, you could feel it from the characters, in the looks, and in the intimacy of certain moments. Visually, this film is a masterpiece blending three distinct types of cinematography. The first being standard action movie at it's best. Fast cars and big explosions. The second being raw journalism, the kind of filming you'd expect if watching a car race on television and the third being incredibly artistic, turning a single moment into several minutes, or using ultra-high contrast grainy photography to convey mood and emotion. Further, the lighting and sound of the film cannot be ignored as it was superbe. The acting will not win awards, but the actors played their rolls perfectly.

They were sexy, but humble. Gentle and caring, quietly heroic. My only issue is their solution to the problem of the actor playing Steve Watson's inability to speak French. It appears they filmed him doing his lines in English and then dubbed it over in bad French. I would have been nice to have an actor who could have spoken a little better French, but it was not overly distracting to the film as a whole. And, they were sexy. They were the dream of what a race car driver should look like, act like. Not only for women, but for men too. Makes you want to go down to the track and cheer.

I cannot comment on the film's accuracy to the race world, but then again, it is a movie, adapted from a cartoon and to that end, it is phenomenal.