Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets Dazzles, But Fails To Pop.

The Good: Decent direction, Good themes, Wonderful special effects
The Bad: Mediocre plot and characters, Some huge technical gaps
The Basics: Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets is a beautiful film that never quite manages to excite as much as it seems it should.


This summer, there have been very few films I have gotten excited about based upon the previews. One of the few I went into with virtually no outside knowledge of was Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets. I saw a preview trailer for Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets and it looked intriguing. I knew that the film was based upon a graphic novel, but after reading The Coldest City (reviewed here!) to prepare myself for Atomic Blonde, I opted not to prepare myself for watching the movie by reading the graphic novel first. So, when I sat down to Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets, all I was armed with was the information from the preview trailer and the knowledge that the opening-weekend grosses for the film were less-than-stellar.

Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets is a film by Luc Besson and about halfway through watching the movie, I got to thinking that The Fifth Element (reviewed here!) took a long time to find its audience. The Fifth Element is generally considered a film that was produced before its time and I highly suspect that Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets suffers from a similar problem. When Star Wars (reviewed here!) was first released and illustrated a populated universe, many critics were flummoxed; films that have tried to create similarly creative and alien-filled galaxies seem to stumble in a similar way. Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets is very packed with creatures, devices and backstory, but outside the setting and themes, I found it virtually impossible to emotionally invest in the film.

Starting in 1975 with the first modules of the International Space Station being placed in Earth's orbit, the ISS expands over hundreds of years. The ISS is the site of first contact with aliens in 2150 and hundreds of years later, the station has been expanded to the point that its mass is no longer sustainable in orbit. It becomes known as Alpha Station and sent away from Earth. On the planet Mul, the peaceful, pearl-farming aliens are thriving and celebrating the environmental renewal when the planet is bombarded by massive pieces of military hardware and alien ships. Major Valerian awakens in a virtual reality program having just dreamed of Mul's destruction. Valerian, a law enforcement officer, and his partner (both on the job and in his personal life) Laureline, are tasked with recovering a Mul converter on the planet Kyrean. En route to the extra-dimensional Big Market on Kyrean, Valerian learns that he has been the recipient of external brainwaves, suggesting to him that he just received memories of Mul's destruction.

At the Big Market, Valerian and Laureline encounter the gangster Igon Siruss, who illegally obtained the converter. Valerian is in the process of stealing the converter when he recognizes the would-be buyers of the technology as people from Mul. After narrowly escaping with the super-valuable converter (which is the creature that made pearls on Mul), Laureline and Valerian journey to Alpha Station to defend the military leader of the humans. On Alpha Station, the pair learns that there is a growing irradiated zone on Alpha Station that threatens all life there. When the security council's meeting is attacked and Commander Filitt is captured, Valerian and Laureline go on a journey through Alpha Station to recover the military leader and in the process, they uncover a massive conspiracy surrounding the destruction of the planet Mul.

Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets is a tough film to unpack; the spectacle of the movie is near-complete. Indeed, the only bad effect that I noticed was that when characters pet the Mul converter, the hand motions/creature movements do not quite line up. The special effects element of Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets are immersive and, occasionally, overwhelming.

The story of Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets is far less-impressive than the effects, though the themes of the film are decent and experimental in a way similar to those of The Fifth Element. The characters are a mix of engaging and very obvious archetypes. Valerian is a young Han Solo, cocksure, womanizing, and by-the-book; Laureline is efficient, ethical and able to use judgement as opposed to simply following the rules. But Laureline is also the character who explores the nature of love in Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets.

Dane DeHaan spends Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets delivering a performance that is identical to a young version of a well-known actor . . . I haven't been able to place it, but the entire time I was watching the film, I felt like I was watching someone else. Valerian is not poorly portrayed, but DeHaan plays him like himself playing the other actor playing the role. Cara Delevingne is good as Laureline, but Eric Lampaert's brief time on screen seems like Lampaert playing Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow for Thaziit and Ethan Hawke appears to be impersonating Mark McGrath for his part of Jolly The Pimp. Rihanna is surprisingly undistracting in the role of Bubble.

Despite the themes and the special effects, Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets is a startling average science fiction action movie. While the film might age well, its time is not quite there yet and the film seems more like an academic exercise than a truly impressive and unique story of its own.

For other films currently in theaters, please check out my reviews of:
Atomic Blonde
Spider-Man: Homecoming
Baby Driver
Transformers: The Last Knight
Wonder Woman

4.5/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Choosing To Be Bad: Columbiana Bores Us At The End Of Summer Blockbuster Season.

The Good: One or two lines of dialogue, Zoe Saldana's acting is fine.
The Bad: Boring, No empathetic characters, Plot is so incredibly predictable as to be unwatchable, PG-13.
The Basics: Columbiana is such a typical revenge action-adventure story that it leaves the viewer feeling jaded because it is so unoriginal.


We have officially entered the August/September cinematic doldrums and with the release of Columbiana it is easy to see why. Every now and then, when August - the dumping ground for all of the movies that couldn't compete at the outset of Summer Blockbuster Season - comes, there is a movie that makes me wonder why the film was held back. With Columbiana I did not wonder for a moment. In addition to only having three actors whose names I recognized - Zoe Saldana, Callum Blue, and Michael Vartan - I went into Columbiana having seen none of the trailers, reading nothing about it and having seen nothing else by director Olivier Megaton.

Ironically, all I had seen of Columbiana before watching the movie was a still of Zoe Saldana's character with a rocket launcher which, ironically, does not appear in the film. I suspect, given when the rocket launcher comes up, that showing her shooting it was a moment too much to keep the film PG-13 and that is the first complaint I'll detail with Columbiana. Columbiana is barely PG-13 with heavy violence and an astonishing number of times Zoe Saldana gets undressed without actually showing her breasts. The thing is, Columbiana is so violent and cut so awkwardly that there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that it was edited to get it down to PG-13 and I can only suspect that was because on some level Megaton realized that only a 13 year old would find Columbiana fresh, interesting or new.

It is not. Columbiana is like Payback (reviewed here), without the sense of whimsy or The Usual Suspects without the sense of character. In fact, the list of movies Columbiana reminded me of could keep going on, except that whatever examples I could come up with, the common thread would be that those movies were interesting. Unfortunately, Columbiana was not and I am sure that when the "unrated" DVD version is released, it won't be any more interesting or better, it will just have more graphic murders in it.

In Columbia in 1992, Fabio is getting out of the organized crime family run by Don Luis. Smart enough to realize that Marco, his mentor in the organization, is not going to just let him go, Fabio rushes home and tries to get his wife and daughter out of the house. Unfortunately, he is too late and Marco and his men descend upon the house. Marco kills Fabio and his wife and asks the quiet girl, Cataleya, for an object he is certain she has. She does have it, but instead of giving it to him, she flees, makes it to the U.S. Embassy and is extradited to the United States. There, she finds her way to her Uncle Emilio where she is set up to have a somewhat normal life. Instead, she insists upon becoming a killer and Emilio obliges her.

Fifteen years later in California, a drunk woman crashes into a police car. She is booked at the local station which just happens to be where an important prisoner is being held for the night by the U.S. Marshals. Only, the woman isn't random and her presence there is not random; it's Cataleya and she manages to get through the prison to kill the prisoner, marking him with her trademark lipstick signature, the orchid her name is based upon. Shortly after this unauthorized mission, she goes on a kill for Emilio and has a rendezvous with her artist lover. But after twenty-three murders with her signature, the FBI has had enough and they release pictures to the press, alerting Marco and Don Luis, who are now in CIA protective custody in the U.S. to the threat Cataleya represents to them.

Columbiana is bad. Sometimes, the analysis ought to be as simple as that. The movie starts in the harsh yellow light of Columbia and Fabio's exit from the mob is so contrived as to seem scripted. The only thing that feels fresh in the first act is the fact that he is smart enough to realize everyone he cares about is about to die. Unfortunately, after this insightful character moment, the movie degenerates into five minutes - it felt like fifteen - of parkour and Honda motorbike advertisements. Olivier Megaton illustrates the whole process of Cataleya going from Columbia to Chicago and that is something slightly different from other, similar, films, but it is no more interesting.

What works throughout the film is the occasional line of dialog. Not all of the writing is great, like the tribute to the conceit early on in the film with Fabio wearing a white shirt (so we know pretty much right away he's going to get shot), but some of the dialogue actually manages to feel fresh. Luis Besson and Robert Mark Kamen seem to actually enjoy writing lines like "I want to be a killer" (young Cataleya) "Okay" (Emilio). The writers also have a pretty decent sense of time, with references to Xena: Warrior Princess making 1992 seem like 1992. There is a somewhat quirky sense to some of the lines - about one every half hour - and the movie has a few moments where the sensibilities are fairly smart. Emilio pointing out that "A tag killer is stupid" is one of the smarter observations in this genre.

Unfortunately, it does not phase Cataleya. Nothing seems to. Cataleya is always one step ahead, but because she chooses the life she gets, it is impossible to have empathy for her. In fact, Cataleya is usually several steps ahead, but again, she chooses to be a killer and this is a revenge movie, so it is not surprising. The first time we see Zoe Saldana's incarnation of Cataleya, it is obvious to anyone seasoned in the genre that she is in control. She has a plan, none of it is coincidence. The whole thing feels so choreographed that one is surprised that FBI Special Agent Ross takes so long to believe a woman could be responsible for the killing inside the prison. But the fact that moments after Cataleya is incarcerated, the mark shows up pretty much makes a blinding arrow to insist viewers connect the dots.

Similarly, the moment Michael Vartan's Danny enters the narrative, it is obvious that he is there to be Cataleya's love object and while Megaton does not keep us waiting long, the PG-13 nature of the film is especially dull in the love story between Danny and Cataleya. In fact, the elements of that subplot seem like the most obvious form of counterbalance. There is a moment when the two are in bed that is clearly intended to humanize Cataleya, but instead it just feels like it is supposed to be that type of moment - i.e. it never becomes the actual moment, it is always supposed to be that moment and Cataleya is never humanized.

As for the acting, "meh" is the best judgment I am going to muster up tonight. Zoe Saldana burst onto the big screen and collective conscious for the masses with Star Trek (reviewed here!) a few years back and she hasn't stopped rocking it since. In Columbiana, she is convincing, but one has to wonder if she really cares to make a specific statement or if she's just happy to make any statement. In Columbiana, Saldana's Cataleya comes across not only as focused and determined, but mechanized. She does not seem particularly hurt and instead, Saldana seems to be sleepwalking through the motions of most of her scenes. That only further diminishes the level of interest in the movie; that the star seems bored in many of her scenes sucks the life out of them.

Finally, because my eyes lit up when I saw Michael Vartan in the cast, I feel it is worth mentioning this: the action-adventure sequences are not all that they could be. Without spoiling anything, the climactic battle is nothing for fans of the genre. In fact, the second season finale of Alias (which Vartan was an integral part of) had a fight that puts the climactic hand-to-hand battle in Columbiana to shame. Part of the significant difference: for the Alias episode, the battle was frenetic, fast and the key moments were shown with lethal precision. In Columbiana, when the fight gets stale or choreographed, Megaton just shakes the camera more until the camerawork begins to look like it is being done by an individual who is having a seizure. This doesn't make it better or more interesting, it just makes it more movementy*.

Sadly, that is the epitaph of Columbiana: it is not better or more interesting than any other revenge story or action adventure film. It's just here now and that's hardly a reason to see it.

For other revenge films, please check out my reviews of:
Hanna
X-Men First Class
Hannibal Rising

3/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my index page on the subject by clicking here!

* I know this is not a real word.

© 2011 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

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