Dante 01 (2008) Reviews

• This was a brute, dark drama. . .but the End was Huh?

  Rabh172010-03-14

  I pulled this one out after reading someone's review here. One-- If you pull the DVD via Netflix, you CAN change the language to English, although I am sure that you will notice some of the lines just fall so flat it hurts, but if (like me) you are not a native French Speaker, you will just have let those moments pass. Just try to ignore long complicated lip movements when the actor gives a three-word answer. Plus the Dubbed English is can be extremely FLAT and lacks emotion. The Film is dark, clinically brutal and coherently themed. The scene is an orbital Psychiatric station around some unknown planet named Dante 01. The patients/inmates are all hopelessly criminally insane. And here arrives another patient with a cold-eyed research doctor who begins to conduct not-quite-kosher nanotech psychonueral experiments on the inmates. On board the station already are two resident doctors, one of whom has a dark secret of his own. The Sets are well thought through and definitive. You will feel the close, tight confines of a Space Station and a sense of vulnerability both to space itself, and empathize with the vulnerability of the inmates who seem to be caught in a maze of compartments wherein they are treated more like lab animals than patients. The problem-- and the reasons I rated this a 6 --is the story line. Saint-George's history & origin is vague and not explained. Maybe in the French version there is some side explanation-- but not in the English dub. But if you ignore that omission, the story did move with a rough-edged deliberation that is part intelligent prison-drama and Medical Science Gone wrong, an interesting combo. The new Doctor commences experimental injections on the prisoners with some rather icky internal graphics and outward pain and suffering. At the same time, Saint-George is manifesting some strange 'power' that has an origins with whatever the heck happened to him in the past. As you watch the movie you will be settling into watch what happens when Saint-George's power manifestations begin to go head-to-head with the Doctor's twisted medical experiment. THIS was the script and the imbued storyline for the first two thirds of the movie which makes this movie different from MOST of the Sci-Fi out there. Here is where I downgraded the movie down to a 6. Either they ran out of Time or Money or the good graces of the Producers-- because the ending was just slapped onto the end of this movie just for the sake of being able to say: "The End". One of the inmates acts of his own and accesses the station's system to send it powering out of orbit, then locks the controls. Well. . .he IS criminally Insane. And That's what Criminally Insane people DO. Okay. . .except here's where the Movie ran out of Time or whatever because it goes from being cerebral Sci-Fi and becomes suddenly Brainless. Because it turns out that the only way to stop disaster is to get to the Manual control which is only accessible INSIDE the Prisoner quarters? Oh. . .that makes Sense. And it gets better-- Once INSIDE the Prisoner quarters, you then have to open a conduit filled with BOILING HOT cooling fluid and swim down a corridor to this little isolated room where the EMERGENCY CUTOFF is? Oh that makes even MORE Sense than before. I know and recognize the Mad Engineering Schematic gimmick. Emergency Switches that are ALWAYS located on the OPPOSITE end of a facility or Ship and the ONLY way to get to it is through a tunnel filled with Toothy Alien Monsters? And the only things that makes this gimmick work is that the male viewers usually get to ogle the scantily clad female heroine screaming alongside the hero as they fight their way to aforesaid 'Emergency Switch'. That doesn't happen here, though. So put your beer down. Instead one of the Inmates VOLUNTEERS to dive INTO THE BOILING OIL and swim to the switch. Think 'Deep Frying'. Okay, that's rich! But it's still workable-- if he were to don a spacesuit. . .They ARE on a Space Station after all. And he IS Insane?!? But NO! They rip and cut INSULATION, douse it with water and wrap the fool up from head to toe in foamy strips that will only SUCK UP BOILING OIL Cooling fluid as ANY IDIOT will tell you it would. Think 'French Fry'. But at least they give him strap on Goggles. . .which come off while he's in the boiling oil. I will say that the fellow gave the Director and the audience some heart-wrenchingly convincing SCREAMS before flicking the switch and then dying. Bravo! Bravo! Then the Next Scene has Saint-George outside in. . . a SPACE SUIT! And at this point the movie patently STOPS making sense. Although the Director made an attempt to hypnotize me. . .I think. It didn't work. The End STILL made no sense. But I found the first 3/4 of the movie very memorable, nonetheless. Unfortunately, the ending turned what could have been a truly epic, cerebral Sci-Fi film into a classic with Literary undercurrents into an interesting Saturday night Flop. I say watch this with your Sci-Fi buff friends and have your own Vote competition. Lambert Wilson's talent was wasted here. WASTED.

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• Brilliantly conceived, directed and edited, but ultimately disappoints

  banapaulo2008-05-01

  Got the chance to see this at the Sci-Fi London last night in a packed cinema. As a big fan of City of Lost Children and Delicatessen I was suitably excited. The film establishes itself from the off with a very confident and distinct visual style and sense of (the deep, dark void of) space. A man arrives at a colony circling the fiery planet Dante, his name and history unknown. The ship is a base for psychiatric research on a handful of criminals, held as guinea-pigs and cut off from outside contact. The new man is seen as a messiah by some of the convicts, a trouble-maker by others, as the psychiatrists carry out routine and risky genetic experiments with their DNA. The film maintains a heightened feeling of tension and claustrophobia that is almost migraine inducing but transfixing. The editing is first rate and the film is well acted (Dominque Pinon, a Caro and Jeunet regular, appears). Unfortunately, the plot keeps promising to go somewhere but ends up disappearing down a black hole of messianic symbolism, and the dialogue is fairly bland and perfunctory. The violence is also almost sickening at times, though this may not bother some. This is a very confidently directed film that is clearly the unique vision of one very creative visualist, I only hope Caro could have applied his touch to better material and not surrender to pretensions of the religious and philosophical. I'm not suggesting that no film should try to tackle these things, but this film doesn't deliver enough of anything else. Many will call the film deep but ask them what it's about before you believe them. Worth seeing, though. Definitely deserves better marketing, but I wouldn't want to be the one to do it.

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• Yes, Francois, There Is A Space Santa Claus...

  loogenhausen2011-11-30

  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.

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• A movie that was half finished

  josola31-271-9842332013-11-02

  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.

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• Experimental Movie

  pmdawn2008-08-28

  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.

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