Customer Reviews

Renegade

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

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.

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!

To truly become a man one must conquer his fear of 'Two Worlds,' the temporal, mundane world in which we live and the intangible, eternal spirit world within. Mike Blueberry (Vincent Cassel) or "Broken Nose" (his Indian name) has come to his defining moment in life. An old enemy has returned to town, the man responsible for the death of his first love. Will Mike be able to conquer the enemy from his past as well as his inner demons that have tormented him since that tragic event? Or will he succumb to his fears and remain forever nothing more than a man and a monster?

Recipe for the making of 'Renegade': Take the opening twenty minutes of 'Dead Man,' the greater middle portion of 'The Emerald Forest' and mix in a little '2001: A Space Odyssey' at the end and you have 'Renegade.' Not a bad blend by any means.

Simply put, the closest you'll get to seeing the other worlds of spirit and true reality without taking Ayahuasca or Peyote.
The director took over a hundred trips on Ayahuasca, helped by a real shaman (the old Indian in the film!). The effects portray as close as possible the reality of the experience.
Mind blowing stuff. The last time I watched it I fast forwarded through the slow parts, stopping at the key plot elements, and also stopping to savour the trippy parts. Madsen is great in this, and everyone acts well.
Anyone contemplating taking the shamanic journey would do well to watch this to get a taste of the heaven and hell it can lead to.

(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.

I have never heard of the comic on which this movie is based (and when I saw this movie, I didn't even know it was based on a comic) and I usually really dislike westerns. But this was no ordinary western - it was a brilliant metaphysical work!

For those who like westerns or the comic on which it is based, as other reviewers already said, you will probably not dig this. But, if you like spiritual/visionary/visually trippy type films (think What Dreams May Come, Pi, The Wall, even Field of Dreams), then you will probably enjoy this.

I have been a student of ethnobotanical studies over the last 25 years. I have been initiated into the mystical rites by shaman guides with various herbal sacraments and I must say the ayahuasca-like imagery and experience which this film portrays is beyond words in its authenticity....I am buying a copy and highly recommend Jan's Other Worlds (d'autres mondes) before viewing Blueberry or Renegade...
Dr. Rory Ingalls

Like one of the other reviewers wrote: "If you love westerns...DON'T BUY THIS MOVIE!!!!!!!" This is an incredible blend of the director's experience of studying in the Amazon with shamans and spirits of the rainforest. I could have never imagined it could be pulled off so well. I read horrible things about the story of movie, so I was coming in with very low expectations in that arena. As a result, I was pleasantly surprised. It wasn't painful at all, and the presentation of the shamanism is so accurate I got shivers many times during the movie. I only gave it 4 stars because the narrative of the story wasn't strong enough to merit 5 stars. I soooo look forward to seeing more of this director's work. He has already made several documentaries that directly explore shamanism in "Other Worlds" and a series of documentaries -"Another Reality"- which includes a beautiful presentation of the Hindu Saint Amma Chi. Neither are available for sale as far as I know.

Inspired from the French comic strip Blueberry, this film is an attempt at going beyond what a comic book cannot provide but cinema special effects offer galore. We can thus descend into a visualization of all the phantasms and haunting guilt or frustrations that possess one's psyche. That dimension is extremely interesting and marvelously successful. The meaning itself is rather simple: the greed of some white looters looking for the gold of Indians against the magic of Navaho Indians to protect their land, their riches, their sacred mountains and their sacred world beyond the surface of things. Blueberry is in-between because he was raised by the Indians but he has become the Marshall of a small city through which the looters are going. Note the Indians can successfully defend their heritage only thanks to a white man who has made the effort of understanding them. I find this slightly biased even if truthful in a way. The second lesson is that the magic attributed to the Indians is nothing but a trancelike state induced by some beverage that makes the individual confront his own deepest fears and frights, desires and wishes. One has to ,confront these demons and vanquish them, conquer them, in order to come back rejuvenated, enhanced in one's life. Apart from that the film is slightly simple in content but it is saved by the digitalized special effects that become like graphic art.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines

Having read all the Blueberry "comics" by Moebius & Charlier, I was excited to learn a film adaptation was in the works...

The original graphic stories were a sprawling pastiche of just about every cliche' you've ever seen in a western film! They closely resembled the popular "spaghetti" westerns of Sergio Leone. They were excellent story-telling in spite of this!

This film adaptation could have gone in just about any direction. The direction it did take was a pleasant surprise!

It is evident that Director Jan Kounen is also familiar with Moebius' other works and chose to focus this story on some of the more spiritual underpinnings that are the best part of the French illustrator's fantastic creations.

In short, this is like no other "Western" you've ever seen.

I'd love to know what Jean "Moebius" Giraud thinks of this film!