Dante 01

I used to be a fan of Caro, being french and grown up in the 90's, and being a visual effects artist. I can't believe how bad this film come back turned out to be! I watched it all as respect for the cast, which is good, but to no avail... Poor story line, vague plot, even vaguer religious connotations. The references to Solaris really made me angry, being a fan of that film (the original Russian version, Tarkosky's). What nerve using such a mater piece with such superficiality! It does look like a production butchered film... but to be honest I found the production design bad, that mix of retro and space technology simply doesn't work here. And the visual effects and artistic direction very poor and repetitive. OK it seems like money was scarce... but also seems like no real effort was made. What a shame...

Still, waiting for more Caro, this had to be an accident!

I really wanted to like this film, since I've had good luck with French flicks lately as well as being interested in the neat little cast assembled here. Among them are Lambert Wilson (the Merovingian himself) and Dominique Pinon (Delicatessen, Amelie, etc...). Mix in a little Cube, throw in a dash of Alien 3 and sprinkle in some Powder for good measure and you have the undercooked hodgepodge of Dante 01. Good sci-fi is hard to come by these days, mainly because I think it's the most high concept genre of film as well as the hardest to execute really well. Unfortunately, despite some very interesting ideas and good production values, it doesn't add up to much of anything when it was all over. Wilson's main character has almost zero lines in the film and isn't really even a main character. If you're going to have your main character remain essentially silent, that's fine, but for the love of Odin please make him interesting. I completely understood what was going on, but it just didn't register with me as much as I was hoping it would. There is a sequence just before the last shot of the film with Wilson outside in space that was just so agonizingly excessive that I was swearing at the screen for it to stop, which I hardly ever do. Maybe you'll have a different opinion, which is fine. But for me, no dice.

So, there is this space prison filled with bald criminals...heard this one before? Corporate scientist Elisa (Linh Dan Pham) arrives on a prison ship with plans of using the felons as guinea pigs for a new DNA altering serum. Also arriving on the shuttle is new prisoner St. Georges (Lambert Wilson). Quickly thrown into the tiny populace, the prisoners notice something is not right with the new inmate when he begins miraculously healing other inmates.

Marc Caro - co-director of the DELICATESSEN and THE CITY OF LOST CHILDREN - makes his long awaited return to feature film-making but, unfortunately, this seems a step back. The film is visually stunning but the religious allegory heavy plot doesn't do it any favors as Caro seems to be mimicking 2001 and SOLARIS. This moves along at a pretty deliberate pace until an ending pops up that will make you scramble for the DVD menu, thinking you've inadvertently skipped a chapter. It literally comes out of nowhere and you can almost hear the money men pulling out of the project (reportedly last minute financial woes forced Caro to change his original ending). Interestingly, the US DVD has a 30-minute "making of" extra and co-writer Pierre Bordage mentions this was a project originally developed for Alejandro Jodorowsky. There is a great cast including DELICATESSEN lead Dominique Pinon and DELLAMORTE co-star François Hadji-Lazaro.

I'm usually a very 'nice' reviewer. The kind that usually overlooks some faults in movies because the 'experience' is truly what matters to him. So, 'tis with a heavy heart that I say; I have to agree with the majority of reviewers here.

This movie feels like it was obviously cut short because of money or deadline issues, so it is painfully frustrating in that sense. The story is interesting, and the visuals and sound are astounding, although very influenced by older sci-fi movies (Alien 3 and Resurrection come to mind), but the religious overtones are rendered abstract (at best) by end of the movie.

This is a beautifully well-made movie with awesome visuals, but it has to be taken as an experiment, just like inside the story. Or as an experience, if you prefer.

That's because essentially, the last part of the movie was completely lame. And by lame I mean obviously rushed, incomplete and unfinished. Similar to "The Objective" in that respect, but even worse.

So allow me to present this movie in another way - as an experimental movie. As an audiovisual spectacle for the senses. And as such, Dante 01 is a marvel.

Having said that, the average casual moviegoer will probably not appreciate it in that sense and thus ask for a refund.

I expected to watch this movie for a long time. It is not easy always to get access to French or other non English speaking movies. I knew about the bad comments but the director previous work convinced me of this one.

The story is interesting and the idea of a possible messiah in a jail is very compelling. The main character never talks too much and you never know exactly what was in his past. That is a good ingredient that several westerns exploited very well.

The beginning promises a psychological thriller in space like Moon from Duncan Jones or the creation of a religious cult like the one existing in Alien 3. Unfortunately we don't get any or that, only the promise and the glimpses of what it could have been.

The end is confusing to say the least and the director appeared to rush to end the movie. Some of the news in the trivia section may explain why this movie appears to be an unfinished work. Cutting the budget in half changes whatever the director had originally in mind. That is a shame because the movie had potential.