A Brilliant Conflict

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

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.

Considering all the disasters when comic books are turned into movies,this one is not a complete failure .The beginning (Mrs Vaillant's nightmare) was taken from "Le 13 Est Au Départ"and all those who read the comics (Jean Graton created his character in "Tintin" in 1957)will like the Vaillant 's desirable mansion,their Moulinsart (Marlinspike) ,La Jonquière .Julie Wood appears but she is not Steve Warson's fiancée ;so does Gabrielle who is Yves 's wife (Yves who appeared very early in the series -"Route De Nuit" - is absent) in the comics .When they made a TV miniseries (13 episodes) in the sixties,they hired a professional racing driver (Henri Grandsire ,who sadly did not resemble Michel);here we have Sagamore Stevenin (Jean -François 's son)and Diane Kruger ,whose Julie is not a motocross star but a racer too;it takes a lot of imagination to believe they belong to the racing circuits;as for poor Steve Warson ,the actor does not look like the part ,being too short,too gentle ;this character was an orphan ,which explains he was a loudmouth when he met the hero who enjoyed a big family (Michel's parents,his brother Jean Pierre and sister-in-law Agnès who have got a daughter unknown to the readers!,all of whom appear);on the other hand ,Michel is not a married man -his wife Françoise is not in the movie- and he seems in love with Julie);as an user pointed out,what a mix-up! The screenplay is just 0K,the villains are essentially girls (the Leaders' daughter) and there are two nice songs (both of them in English) over the final cast and credits;two languages are used(French and American English),which shows respect for the audience ;incidentally,most of the swearwords are in English!

This movie is strangely uneven. On the one hand, all the shots on a racetrack or whenever somebody drives a car are very nicely shot and framed. But when it's a transition scene, it has the look and terrible acting of a third-zone TV feature. Some shots are not even really in focus ! Furthermore, all the post-production dubbing of the foreign actors is quite off, and the story has some big plot holes. For instance, why don't they even try to call the police ? What's left is a movie with some pretty girls, very nice cars and some good action sequences. Not that bad, but not enough to make a good movie.

This was one of the worst movies I've ever seen. Bad acting, bad sound, bad story, bad plot, bad music, bad directing,...The actual racing was never realistic or fun to watch as in some real movies about cars. (Italian job)I started counting every ridiculous thing I could see, about a half an hour before the ending, and ended up with no less than 87.Unrealistic, dumb, irritating, predictable, childish, boring, but I must admit, funny. (although not intended)I gave it a 1/10