By Emilio Frenk.
Director: Luc Besson
Cast: Dane DeHaan, Cara Delevigne, Clive Owen, Herbie Hancock, Kris Wu, Sam Spruell, Alain Chabat, Louis Leterrier, Rihanna, Ethan Hawke and Rutger Hauer.
Rating: Average.
French action filmmaker Luc Besson brings “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets”, a science fiction film that could have had a much better result if more time would have been more invested in story.
Based on the comic book series of “Valerian and Laureline” the movie tells the story of Major Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and Sergeant Laureline (Cara Delvigne), two young soldiers which job is to maintain order in human territory.
After one of their missions, both of them are briefed and told about a dark force that threatens Alpha, the home to species from a thousand planets.
Both Valerian and Laureline have to find out what is the mystery about this threat and both of them are in a race against time on not only preserving Alpha, but the future of the whole universe.
“Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets” is considered so far the most ambitious movie of Luc Besson´s career that consists in movies like “Leon: The Professional”, “The Fifth Element” and many others.
The only problem that I saw in the film was in screenplay and I felt that Besson focused more on making the movie a visual experience instead in focusing more in character development.
I noticed that Besson had influences in movies like Star Wars, The Fifth Element and other Science Fiction movies and made an impressive visual experience.
The chemistry between Dane DeHann and Cara Delevigne was not there and I didn´t buy it. DeHann is a great and talented young actor but he was not fit for the role and Delevigne did a decent job and she is slightly superior than DeHann.
I felt that the casting choices that Besson made for this film were not the correct ones and with other characters portraying the lead roles I would say that we could have seen another story.
I am surprised in a director like Luc Besson that normally he spends time in developing characters and this time he focused more on the looks of the film.
There are spectacular action sequences in the film and it´s beautifully shot which is one of the things I did acknowledge on it.
I still believe that if Besson would have spend more time in script revisions for “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets” could have been a superior film.
I feel that this movie in a certain way people are not going to forget it because of the incredible visuals that possesses and action sequences but it´s not “The Fifth Element” which by far is a much superior film.
This is one of the most expensive movies done in European Soil and for that reason my expectations were a little bit more higher.
I give “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets” a slight recommendation and this is most likely of the visuals that were very well made, although most of them are with green screen but still looked good. Again if the screenplay would have had more revisions we might be talking of another film.