La Femme Nikita) on DVD

Luc Besson Collection
Leon The Professional/The Fifth Element/The Big Blue/Subway/The Messenger/La Femme Nikita
Actors: Jean Reno, Gary Oldman, Natalie Portman, Anne Parillaud, Bruce Willis
Director: Luc Besson
Genres: Action & Adventure, Comedy, Drama, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Mystery & Suspense, Military & War

UR 2001 13hr 21min

The Professional — Luc Besson (The Fifth Element) made his American directorial debut with this stylized thriller about a French hit man (Jean Reno) who takes in an American girl (Natalie Portman) being pursued by a corrupt... more » killer cop (Gary Oldman). Oldman is a little more unhinged than he should be, but there is something genuinely irresistible about the story line and the relationship between Reno and Portman. Rather than cave in to the cookie-cutter look and feel of American action pictures, Besson brings a bit of his glossy style from French hits La Femme Nikita and Subway to the production, and the results are refreshing even if the bullets and explosions are awfully familiar. --Tom Keogh The Fifth Element

Ancient curses, all-powerful monsters, shape-changing assassins, scantily-clad stewardesses, laser battles, huge explosions, a perfect woman, a malcontent hero--what more can you ask of a big-budget science fiction movie? Luc Besson's high-octane film incorporates presidents, rock stars, and cab drivers into its peculiar plot, traversing worlds and encountering some pretty wild aliens. Bruce Willis stars as a down-and-out cabbie who must win the love of Leeloo (Milla Jovovich) to save Earth from destruction by Jean-Baptiste Emmanuel Zorg (Gary Oldman) and a dark, unearthly force that makes Darth Vader look like an Ewok. --Geoff Riley The Big Blue

A hit in Europe but a flop in the U.S.--where it was trimmed, rescored, and given a new ending--Luc Besson's The Big Blue has endured as a minor cult classic for its gorgeous photography (both on land and underwater) and dreamy ambiance. Jean-Marc Barr is a sweet and sensitive but passive presence as Jacques, a diver with a unique connection to the sea. He has the astounding ability to slow his heartbeat and his circulation on deep dives, "a phenomenon that's only been observed in whales and dolphins? until now," remarks one scientist. Kooky New York insurance adjuster Joanna (Rosanna Arquette at her most delightfully flustered and endearingly sexy best) melts after falling into his innocent baby blues, and she follows him to Italy, where he's continuing a lifelong competition with boyhood rival Enzo (Jean Reno in a performance both comic and touching). Besson's first English-language production looks more European than Hollywood, and it suffers from a tin ear for the language. At times it feels more like an IMAX undersea documentary than a drama about free divers, but the lush and lovely images create a fairy tale dimension to Jacques's story, a veritable Little Merman. More dolphin than man, he's so torn between earthly love and aquatic paradise that even his dreams call him to the sea (in a sequence more eloquent than any speech). Besson has expanded the film by 50 minutes for his director's cut, which adds little story but slows the contemplative pace until it practically floats in time, and has restored Eric Serra's synthesizer-heavy score, a slice of 1980s pop that at times borders on disco kitsch. Most importantly, he has restored his original ending, which echoes the fairy tale he tells Joanna earlier in the film and leaves the story floating in the inky blackness of ambiguity. --Sean Axmaker Subway

This dark and highly stylized French import directed by Luc Besson (The Fifth Element, The Professional) concerns an enigmatic safecracker played by Christopher Lambert (Highlander) hiding out in the Paris Metro system from a gangster. While living in the underground and eluding both gangsters and Metro police he meets up with a group of colorful and quirky subterranean inhabitants eager to help him and start a rock band. All the while the safecracker blackmails a rich woman (Isabelle Adjani) with whom he is in love. Meant to be a tongue-in-cheek commentary on urban life, the film works better as a light freewheeling entertainment, with well-constructed fast-paced action sequences and a breezy sense of humor about itself. Subway is an intriguing diversion and a chance to see the cutting edge of modern French moviemaking. --Robert Lane The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc

1999 may be remembered as the year of Joan of Arc: NBC created a miniseries in her honor, Carl Dreyer's long-lost The Passion of Joan of Arc was discovered in a mental hospital, and Facets re-released Jacques Rivette's Joan the Maid. Luc Besson rounds out the corpus with his stylistic and vaguely heretical grand-scale feature, The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc. Besson (La Femme Nikita, The Fifth Element) challenges established notions about the Maid of Orleans as he creates a decidedly more human heroine than have previous biopics. The story line is the same--a young, illiterate peasant girl convinces the dauphin of France to give her an army, and she leads them to victory in Orleans, only to be burned at the stake for heresy--but Milla Jovovich, in the title role, is a woman possessed. Her influences are less than heavenly; as a child she witnesses the murder of her sister by the English, a death caused by the sister's giving her hiding place to young Joan, which causes an intense desire for revenge. Yes, God still speaks to Joan, but even this is undermined, as Dustin Hoffman, playing The Conscience, questions her motives. Cinematically, The Messenger is stunning, with fantastical sequences of Joan in communication with higher powers. Yet the graphic violence (scenes include random decapitation and a dog gnawing on a body); the uneven accents, which make it difficult to tell who is fighting on which side; and the rewriting of lore may make this version of Joan of Arc appeal only to Besson fans. Jovovich is convincing, and while at times the film may drag (at times you wish they'd hurry up and burn her), it is a remarkable and insightful retelling of a well-known piece of history. --Jenny Brown La Femme Nikita

French director Luc Besson (The Fifth Element) broke the commercial taboo against female-driven action movies with this seminal, seductively slick film about a violent street punk (Anne Parillaud) trained to become a smooth, stylish assassin. Though it amounts, in the end, to little more than disposable pop, the film has a cohesiveness in style and tone--akin to the early James Bond films--that gives it a sense of integrity. Parillaud is compelling both as a wild child and chic-but-lethal pro (trained in good manners by none other than Jeanne Moreau). Tchéky Karyo is also good as the cop mentor who develops feelings for her. --Tom Keogh

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Movie Details

Actors: Jean Reno, Gary Oldman, Natalie Portman, Anne Parillaud, Bruce Willis
Director: Luc Besson
Creators: Luc Besson, Alain Le Henry, Andrew Birkin, Marc Perrier, Pierre Jolivet, Robert Mark Kamen, Sophie Schmit
Genres: Action & Adventure, Comedy, Drama, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Mystery & Suspense, Military & War
Sub-Genres: Crime, Bruce Willis, Comedy, Love & Romance, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Mystery & Suspense, Military & War
Studio: Sony Pictures
Format: DVD - Color
DVD Release Date: 12/18/2001
Original Release Date: 11/18/1994
Theatrical Release Date: 11/18/1994
Release Year: 2001
Run Time: 13hr 21min
Screens: Color
Number of Discs: 6
SwapaDVD Credits: 6
Total Copies: 0
Members Wishing: 5
Edition: Box set
MPAA Rating: Unrated
Languages: English, French, German, Italian, Swedish

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Member Movie Reviews

K. K. (GAMER)
Reviewed on 5/28/2021...

4/5 Rating - Leon The Professional - Jean Reno, Gary Oldman, a young Natalie Portman and others shined in this. A must watch!

2/5 Rating - The Fifth Element - A must for Sci-Fi Buffs!

Movie Reviews

Excellent Collection

Nicholas Chase | Los Angeles, CA United States | 10/14/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"A long-time Luc Besson fan, I have avoided renting or buying one of my all-time favorite films, 'Subway' because the US dubbed version is so incredibly terrible. I finally got around to shopping for the DVD and discovered that it had been released twice, once in the original, reformatted version with English dubbing (BLECH!) and more recently in wide-screen format with choice of French with English subtitles or the (BLECH!) dubbing. This box set, for those who are curious, includes the latter version. In fact, all the films in the set are in wide-screen format (5th Element includes BOTH modified and wide-screen) and the box set includes Director's Cut (original French version) of The Big Blue. I took the plunge and bought the collection and can honestly say I'm ecstatic to have purchased it. Well worth the money!"

6 DVD Set Luc Besson

Nicholas Chase | 06/02/2002

(4 out of 5 stars)

"One thing which I wanted to know, but could not find on the packaging until I opened it, was whether the movies in the set were all widescreen. I was quite happy to find out that all of the films in the collection are widescreen, at least according to the packaging. I have watched 4 of these films and enjoyed them all. It would be useful if the technical specifications section would spell out more clearly when films, especially in box sets, are in widescreen."

Luc Besson Rocks!

Mark Benedetto | Castro Valley, CA United States | 07/03/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Simple Review - This is a great collection from a great director. You obviously wouldn't be looking to buy the entire collection if you hadn't seen any of the individual films, so if you like Luc Besson or Jean Reno (an actor in many of Besson's films) then you'll like this set. The good news is that 1) The Professional is the extended international version with 26 additional minutes of footage ($25 on its own), 2) the Big Blue is the director's addition with lots of extra footage, and 3) the Messenger is the extended international version, too. Also, each DVD case has the same spine and border, so they make a really good looking pack. This is a great buy!"