Product Details

• Actors: Vincent Cassel, Michael Madsen
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, NTSC
• Language: English, French, German, Spanish
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Sony Pictures
• VHS Release Date: January 11, 2005
• Run Time: 124 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (53 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0002Z0EJU
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #14,101 in Video (See Bestsellers in Video)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Based on a comic book, the international co-production Renegade (original English-language title: Blueberry) is a feverish, supernatural Western about a young Cajun man, Mike Blueberry (Hugh O'Connor), who defends his prostitute-girlfriend against gunman Wallace Blount (Michael Madsen) and ends up barely alive. Patched up by Indians, Blueberry undergoes the familiar cultural transformation to honorary Native American, then returns to his world to become a small-town marshal. (Vincent Cassel plays the adult Blueberry.) The arrival of Blount, possessed with otherworldly powers and seeking a mystical manuscript, sets the stage for a spooky duel that forces Blueberry to face old demons. The latter part of the film is overtaken by computer-generated effects that grow wearying, but before that director Jan Kounen makes up for weak narrative skills with mesmerizing imagery of the American Southwest. A nice supporting cast includes Juliette Lewis and her father, Geoffrey Lewis, plus Colm Meaney, Eddie Izzard, Ernest Borgnine, and Tcheky Karyo. --Tom Keogh

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you like westerns, look elsewhere. Otherwise it's AWESOME, February 26, 2005

By	doppelganger "dvd-archive" (Chicago) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Renegade (aka Blueberry) (DVD)

Did you ever meet your beast? The other other reviewer is exactly right in that it's a metaphysical experience. Looking at the back cover, I wonder if the person who wrote the description had any idea what the movie was actually about.

There is realism here. Everyone is speaking different languages as it was; French, Spanish, English, Native Americans tounges, etc. Pioneers are looking for gold, and Madsen is looking for His gold (I won't spoil). He's an AWESOME villian, but you already know that. Everyone else is fantastic. The special effects are really well done, and thorough (excellent production value).

About halfway through, I was thinking this is an awesome movie, and toward the end, speechless. Totally stunned, the credits rolled by.

I'm a sci-fi junky, and this didn't seem like it was really up my alley, but was recommended. And thank God, because sometimes the best movies are the ones that you never even heard of.

The reviewers who hated this movie should ask themselves what they wanted out of it, and then maybe go jump out a window for the rest of our sakes.

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A metaphysical western, February 18, 2005

By	Cubist (United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Renegade (aka Blueberry) (DVD)

(Very) Loosely based on Jean "Moebius" Giraud's famous comic strip, Blueberry, Jan Kounen's Renegade only uses the French artist's work as a starting point for which to go off on all kinds of fanciful, metaphysical tangents. It starts with obvious nods to Sergio Leone's expansive widescreen spaghetti westerns and ends up tripping the light fantastic with blatant references to the cosmic climax of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.

From the opening shots of vast, sun-drenched desert landscapes to the lush, green forests that the Native American inhabit, Renegade is saturated in atmosphere. It is rich in texture and detail that immerses the viewer in this world. Kounen uses an impressive arsenal of visual tricks, such as time lapse photography and dissolves to enhance the mystical effect that he is trying to achieve. By the film's climatic 20 minute mind-trip, the director cranks up his style to a whole other psychedelic kaleidoscope of computer generated abstractions that threatens to overload the senses. After the ten-minute mark it gets to be a little much and after that point it becomes an endurance test.

Renegade is a western but with a definite European sensibility that is steeped in symbolism and flashy style. Kounen simultaneously celebrates traditional western iconography (six-shooters, horses, etc.) and subverts it with images of mysticism and magic (animal totems). In this respect it bears more than a passing resemblance to the similarly minded western, Dead Man by Jim Jarmusch. Like it, Renegade is an artsy western but with pretensions to 2001-like cosmic and spiritual awareness. After the last image fades you are practically choking on the dense and intense imagery that comes off as extremely pretentious. But after awhile and once the film's imagery sinks in, some of Renegade's striking imagery lingers.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars SUPERB PSYCHEDELLIA, July 5, 2008

By	Garland G. Hewlett (Brandon, Florida) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Renegade (aka Blueberry) (DVD)

Renegade (aka Blueberry)SUPERB PSYCHEDELLIA- This film literally blew me away. It is the most accurate portrayal of a full blown high dose psychedellic experience that I have ever seen in a motion picture. Too bad Tim Leary isn't around on the physical plane to have caught this one. I am sure that he would have praised it to no end with his considerable mastery of the written word.
As a film, the cinematography is excellent and the editing places the visuals and story line into the realm of pure poetry. This is no ordinary western, but an epic mystical journey that harks back to the glory days of Carlos Casteneda's Don Juan novels. The film gives due reverence and respect to the American Southwestern Indians and their use of the peyote cactus as a healing tool for bringing wholeness to those who are wounded by their past and by the evil that is a part of life and that is responsible for those tramas.
It is interesting to note that Juliet Lewis appears in this film and that she also stared in NATURAL BORN KILLERS which also features and extremely well done and realistic mushroom trip involving snakes and the reptilian levels of consciousness that psychedellics activate deep in the brain.
I found that it took me many hours to fall asleep after watching this movie because I was so excited to discover that someone had suceeded in creating such a wonderful and faithfull vehicle for communicating the awsome mystery and healing properties of the psychedellic experience. I can only say that this one hit it's target and is truly a masterwork of cinematic and spiritual art!