Mr. Movie review: Valerian is a visual feast

Luc Besson is an interesting writer and director. He did brilliant work early in his career with films like The Professional and Le Femme Nikita. His dipping into science fiction has been spotty.

The Fifth Element in 1998 was a technical marvel but a plot disaster. He wrote and directed Lucy in 2014 and it was both a technical and plot bomb.

Besson also produces and writes and did the Taken series and The Transporter series with mixed results. To be fair, spotty for most is a negative. While Besson’s bombs are usually spectacular, they’re at least interesting.

When Besson does manage to get it right, it’s really right. Valerian is an outrageous piece of work that steals bits of concepts from other films — like Avatar — and the technical style of his own The Fifth Element and throws them all at the screen to see what sticks.

To Besson’s credit, most of it does.

Dean DeHaan (A Cure for Wellness) and Cara Delevingne (Suicide Squad) star as Valerian and Laureline. They are agents of the “government” of a thousand planet spaceport, and they’ve stumbled onto a mystery that could end up destroying the place completely.

From the opening scenes that flow to David Bowie’s Space Oddity to credits that show it takes a small city to make one of these things, Valerian flat rocks. It takes two charismatic actors who have as much fun doing this as you’ll have seeing it and sticks them into slam-bang action, gobs of good humor and the eye candy of an effects feast.

Besson’s film is based on the popular French comic book series and even though it’s the most expensive independent film in history at $180 million, it will likely do very well and we’ll see more of Valerian and Laureline in the future.

This story was originally published July 20, 2017 at 2:38 PM with the headline "Mr. Movie review: Valerian is a visual feast."