Product Details

• Actors: Jean Reno, Benoît Magimel, Christopher Lee, Camille Natta, Johnny Hallyday
• Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: French, German, Italian
• Subtitles: English, French
• Region: Region 1 encoding (US and Canada only)
  PLEASE NOTE: Some Region 1 DVDs may contain Regional Coding Enhancement (RCE). Some, but not all, of our international customers have had problems playing these enhanced discs on what are called "region-free" DVD players. For more information on RCE, click here.
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
• DVD Release Date: March 29, 2005
• Run Time: 100 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0007KZQ9S
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #111,928 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Crimson Rivers - Angels of the Apocalypse (Special Edition)" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

French sensation The Crimson Rivers was a serial killer thriller with a difference--it was genuinely thrilling. It was also pretty disturbing, but Jean Reno (The Professional) brought some light to the darkness with his sly performance as dog-phobic detective Niémans. Fortunately, Reno has returned in this highly stylized Luc Besson-penned sequel. Vincent Cassell has not, but Benoît Magimel (The Piano Teacher), as new partner Reda, makes for a decent replacement. Alas, Olivier Dahan isn't in the same league as Matthieu Kassovitz and the story line, which has something to do with the Last Supper, the Maginot Line, and gravity-defying killer monks, is even more convoluted than before. Then there's Johnny Hallyday (The Man on the Train) as a mysterious one-eyed man and Christopher Lee (The Lord of the Rings) as a bad German dude. It's all a little ridiculous, but entertaining nonetheless, and the chase sequences are a treat. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Product Description

Jean Reno is back in action as Commissioner Niemans. The body he found in a monastery seems to point to a ritualistic sacrifice and a portent of something strange to come. At the same time, young police captain Reda finds a man in agony who's an exact DNA match for Christ. Reda quickly finds out his case is directly linked to Niemans, but is the Apocalypse really about to begin as all signs seem to indicate?

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sweet way to spend an afternoon, November 19, 2005

By 

- Kasia S. (New York City) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Crimson Rivers - Angels of the Apocalypse (Special Edition) (DVD)

I saw this while visiting family in Poland, so it was all ready translated into my language and I could concentrate on the movie instead of reading subtitles.

This movie had murky, creepy and dark foes that were insanely fast and unstoppable. It starts off with a bang and it takes you on a search for the Holy Grail type of a ride with evil superhuman monks, dead bodies, catacombs and monasteries with deep dark secrets.

I sat down and didn't stop paying attention till it was over. Jean Reno is great; you just have to enjoy his presence because he does what he knows well. Also there was a scene where his fellow officer Reda who runs amok chasing this monk and they are running on roofs, trains, jumping off buildings, for like 3 minutes. No strings and computer magic just run out of breath chase. It was amazing; my favorite part of the movie and it really imbedded itself into my head.

Great flick, it has action, suspense, blood and gore, secrets and history; a sweet way to spend an afternoon.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent - BUT - allow extra time for viewing - good script*, November 2, 2005

By 

Derek Jacobs (South Bend, Indiana) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Crimson Rivers - Angels of the Apocalypse (Special Edition) (DVD)

(Be sure & read my entire opinion before deciding how much YOU will like 'Crimson' -- after all, I do give it 4 stars. The dialogue is way more important than in most films of this genre.)

I remember Jean Reno from "the Professional" which I really liked, otherwise the description of Crimson was not enough to convince me to watch. I am GLAD I did watch! It's a very enjoyable film. The description on the cover and on most reviews I've seen left me thinking this was just another in a long long list of tales in this genre. And it is that -- then again it's much more than that. AND, there are more than enough SURPISES to keep even a cynic like me interested. I watched it again right away -- had to, really, because...

The movie is far easier to watch if you are fluent in French, which I am not. Like all native English-speaking people, I find that Europeans speak a lot faster than do Americans. In Crimson, the actors speak at a very natural pace in fine French. Because it's subtitled in English, however, that makes it impossible to keep up BECAUSE it's also an ACTION movie so that you need to focus first on the action, yet there's a lot of dialogue that you need to read -- and the dialogue is in no way superfluous. That is to say, the dialogue IS important.

Still, it's a VERY GOOD MOVIE, just be aware that you will frequently be reversing the DVD to pick up on many things BECAUSE there are nuances and a surprise or three tucked in there, which also is a GOOD thing. For example, near the very beginning there's something many viewers will find very 'interesting' -- though different people will assign different things to it -- but you'll be reading subtitles, and only catch a hint of it later deep in the movie, which means at some point you may want to go back (It took me 'til the very end of the movie to realize I thought maybe there was 'something' in that scene and then I went back, but even then I needed the dialogue to 'see' what was happening, and I had to watch that scene about a dozen times to be sure what I was seeing. Then again, YOU might very well 'get' it right away! LOL But I doubt it)

*Much as I enjoy the movie I feel a duty to advise you that the translations used in the subtitles frequently are not even close to the French being spoken in the movie. A very well-scripted film like Crimson gets hobbled a bit by a number of poor translations.

ENJOY the movie, allow some extra time for doubling back to pick up on some very interesting things you didn't quite 'get'.

(The reason I put that note at the top is: I am very detail-oriented, so that the less detail-oriented YOU are, the less you will notice any of the things that I took issue with)

21 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Flat and Superficial Thriller with Flashy Images, March 7, 2005

By 

Tsuyoshi (Kyoto, Japan) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Crimson Rivers - Angels of the Apocalypse (Special Edition) (DVD)

'Crimson Rivers -- Angels of the Apocalypse' ('Les Rivieres Pourpres 2: Les Angels de L'Apocalypse') has little to do with the first one except that the new film has Inspector Niemans played by Jean Reno, the star of the original. Instead of Vincent Cassel, the task of his partner is given to Benoit Magimel, and the script is written by Luc Besson, known for 'The Fifth Element.' Perhaps more interesting are the names of the guest stars, Johnny Hallyday ('The Man on the Train') and, look, legendary Christopher Lee, Count Dracula, or Saruman of 'LOTR.'

The story is the original of Besson, which means nothing original. A dead body of a man is found in the 'Room No 13.' of one secluded monastery, and the way of burial is, as you see, nothing ususal, like a cat in Poe's famous story. While tough detective Niemans investigates the case, mysterious killer(s?) keep on murdering the victims according to their own rituals.

Before a younger cop Reda (Magimel, very good) joins in Niemans's investigation, following the suspect of another strange case, we know where the film is going to lead us. The film's mystery includes, as the title suggests, a biblical theme, and it is not hard to guess the motives of the serial killing. And when Christopher Lee appears as a minister of Germany (he is playing a German), and talks about the days of WW2, now you know Besson is not the most creative writer in the world.

[MAKES ME DIZZY] The film is directed by Olivier Dahan, whose previous works I have not seen yet. But obviously he does not like the time-tested, traditional method of filmmaking, and seems to have refused to use storyboards. In short, the entire film looks like a 100 minute MTV show, French version.

The images of the film are always restless, as if trying to test our patience. The camera often shows slanted picture, and whenever it wants, it starts to rotate without particular meaning. Though unique places (like Maginot Line) are additional merits to the banal story, and the dark, dump, atmosphere of the place is very realistic, these precious moments are scatterd among the pointless and thrill-less script that offers no interest except blood and body count.

Some of the stunts are memorable, the chase scene between Maginel's cop and the high-jumping assassin in particular. Whoever he or she may be, the stunt deserves special mention. But alas, the director meddles with the stuntperson's great job, with cut, cut, cut, and the silly camerawork that, I firmly believe, should be banned in making any action parts in future. And poor editing (which reminded me of the streetcar chase scenes of 'The Rock' which gave me a headache). Sometimes I cried, 'What's going on?'

Reno and Magimel are good, but the acting is not their best, and the same can be said about the legendary actor Lee. And the run-of-the-mill story of Besson, who has written as many as three scripts in 2003 alone, needs a more twisted plot, like that of the original, and what a disappointing ending, which makes no sense whatever. Though there are some fleetingly exciting moments, the flat and incredibly convinient conclusion would exactly tell you why Besson can write so many screenplays.