User Reviews

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.

First of all to gerhard24's comments - the cars at LeMans use normal petrol however, they have a special refueling system with two hoses, one on each side of the car: fuel in one side, air out the other so you're right, they couldn't have refueled at a regular filling station. As for the smoke coming out the front of the Leader: this is perfectly accurate as the Panoz LPM1 (aka "Leader") has it's engine in the front - one of the only racing prototypes at LeMans that does.

Anyway, I found the movie really disappointing. I was at LeMans 2002 when the two extra cars ran to film the sequences for this movie. We were all really looking forward to seeing the final result and frankly I was gutted when I did. Lame story with far too many inaccuracies to make it it any way believable: no way anyone could run out onto the track (Odessa) and and and....They missed out completely on building up the atmosphere before the race and from the way it was filmed it looked like only the Vaillants and Leaders were racing.

However, in Germany the DVD s well worth buying just for the additional material: making of and a series of complete laps of LeMans filmed from inside the Vaillant (Courage) and the Leader (Panoz). Great stuff! Dump the movie though.

I read most of the comics of Michael Vaillant when I was a kid, and I think this movie captured the spirit of the comics. The story could be better, but it was entertaining.

However I noticed 3 things that in my opinion are errors:

*Spoiler Warning*

• The scene with Vaillant driving around Le Mans Flat out with is eyes closed... Was that really necessary? I think nobody have done it and nobody will because it's impossible.

• The scene Vaillant and Warson refuel their racing cars in a regular fuel pump, I might be wrong, But the fuel used in racing cars is a lot different from the one we refuel our cars.

• The final scene with the Leader car in the final lap in the straight blowing is engine, why is the smoke coming out in the front of the car when the engine is at the back?

*End Spoiler Warning*

If you are a racing fan you should see this movie, don't think much about the storyline and focus on some nice images of cars.

For non racing fans, I doubt they enjoy this movie.

Usually I don't post comments here because I'm lazy :) but I do when I'm impressed positively OR negatively. OK, now let's start.

First of all, I must admit to be a little too subjective regarding this movie, because I love motor-sports. I saw Michel Vaillant just one hour ago at TV and here is my verdict:

TOP NOTCH: -the visual style, absolutely stunning, is the first thing what hit your eyes. Luc Besson did again a great job. For those who aren't see the film yet, just imagine that the BBC's Top Gear crew did all the shots. -strong, saturated colors, a feast for the eye -unusual angles: rear or front bumper, the tribunes shot vertically, etc. -short, but memorable scenes: a butterfly flapping the wings and taking off from the hood as the engine is started, a brake disc heated within a second to red, the two prototype race cars appearing suddenly from the behind of an old Citroen 2CV (ha ha, brilliant), the race truck (team Vaillant) rushing into the lake, rising a big water curtain and scaring two fishermen in a boat. -a lot of in-race shots, a must-see for every race fan. Also, because of so much action on the screen, the film has an essential quality: it's not boring.

FLOPS: -unbelievable storyboard facts: the father kidnapped by Ruth Wong, a frustrated chick, and destined to death if his son, Michel, dare to win the race. The same Michel, forced to race for the competing Leader team (c'mon...). Julie Wood hitting several times her car against the opponent, until the two ended with the cars in flames (at 250-300 km/h this is not a proof of minimal intelligence). More, she's not an aggressive person and in race you're focused on your job, not to smash your competitor car. Whatever... -cheesy, melodramatic sequences:Michel bearing Julie in his arms from the crash point to the pits. No one helped him? -overacting: sorry to say, but Lisa Barbuscia (who play the Ruth Wong's character) appeared to be artificial and fake.

Overall, a very good movie, worth not only a rental, but also to buy the DVD. Money well spent, great fun delivered. Good job, Frenchies!

My expectations for this movie were to see familiar comic book characters come to live on-screen and to include great racing scenes. I was a bit disappointed that it did not contain any formula 1 racing scenes which were the main focus in the comic series but I actually liked this movie quite a bit anyways. I watched it in french and didn't understand much of the dialog, interesting enough all of the people in the Leader team spoke English which helped me understand more of the conversations. The action sequences speak for themselves and the emotions of the characters came through clearly enough.

The story of the rivalry between the brutal Leader team and the french Vaillante team continues when the Leader's daughter takes over and seeks revenge on the Vaillants whom she blames for the misery and death of her father. Suspenseful racing action, sabotage, tragedy, love and crime drama: this movie combines it all in a fairly well-written story plot (I've seen worse).

Having read almost all the comic books when I was a child I remember the characters well and for the most part the movie does them justice although I found several inconsistencies: Ruth was transformed from a caucasion woman with short blonde hair to an oriental with long dark hair(in the comic Ruth had an assistant who looked that way - I assume the director got confused???). And what happened to Jean-Pierre's son Jean-Michel? I don't recall him having a daughter named Laura. And since this was supposed to be 13 years after the original incident with the Leader, Michel should have been married to Francoise by now and have a son named Patrick, so what was he doing with Julie Wood (who btw was the motorcycle-racing sister of Jack "Indie" Wood the young driver who replaced Steve Warson when he went MIA after finding out the truth about Ruth).

When you base a movie on a comic book series you should at least get the characters straight (can you imagine the uproar of fans if they would have changed the names of some of the characters in the Superman movies?)With Michel Vaillant they created a mishmash of story lines thrown together from different points in time (afterall the comic book series ran for several decades). In my opinion the title character of Michel was a bit over the top, almost too cocky (he never would have done such an irresponsible thing like driving with his eyes closed in the comic books - KIDS DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME!!!) The cast was well-selected otherwise and it's not the actors' fault that the director and screenwriters didn't do their homework.

Even though the movie wasn't entirely believable, at least it was not cheesy like the animated series or live action TV series. One must bear in mind that the movie IS based on a comic strip geared towards kids and therefore reflects that (I used to read some of the stories in a kids comic book collection called ZACK when I was a preteen).

Update: I have now watched the German version of this movie and was able to understand the conversations. Interesting enough the people who spoke English in the French version suddenly now all spoke German as well and the dubbing was terrible, I almost prefer the French version LOL.

Bottomline: If there ever is a sequel to this movie I sincerely hope that the people responsible will do a better job to stay true to the comic book series.

I've seen this movie just a couple of days ago, and I must say that I have mixed feelings about his movie.

I'm a huge fan of the Michel Vaillant comics, ever since I was still a kid. In fact, I think that Michel Vaillant is partially responsible for the fact that I'm a complete car nut.

However, the movie has disappointed me with the fact that they have taken various elements from different comic stories, and put them together in one new story. For example, the dream sequence in the beginning of the movie is taken from the comic 'Number 13 on the starting line', the trick of blocking the doors of Cramer's rally car at the rally checkpoint is taken from 'The cursed Safari'.

Another thing that bothered me was the sequence in wich Michel laps Le Mans with his eyes closed to impress Julie Wood. The real Michel Vaillant would never show of like that.

One last thing: the Le Mans 24 hours feels like a sprint race in this movie. I really didn't had the impression that it lasted 24 hours.

All in all, this movie wasn't perfect, not by a longshot, but it was entertaining. And isn't that the intention with a movie?