The ending came quite fast, kinda gave me a feeling that something is missing.It was diabolical crap. The ending where he pops into space and heals the planet is just stuck on there with no reason, like the producers panicked and thought, let's shut this movie down fast! I understood the ending as him simple transforming Dante in to Eath with the help of the internally stored "nanomachine".The film was budgeted to 8 million €, but it was cut back to 4 millions. Caro had originally a different ending in mind but couldn't make it with that new budget.It's a shame as it ruined a terrificly tense and atmospheric Sci-Fi film.

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.

(this is spoiler-free) I count "Delicatessen" and "La Cite des Enfants Perdus" as some of my favorite movies of all time. Interestingly, I didn't know Caro had directed this and watched it by accident. I therefore didn't have any expectations set, but in theory it should have been a good surprise.Well, it wasn't. I heard the movie was released with zero press and that Caro disowned it, blaming the editing. Not surprised one bit - it's a terrible movie indeed and I'm flabbergasted someone like Caro could be behind it.The storyline is laughable - leave your brains at the door please. The ending in particular is just pathetic - it's as if they had run out of ideas and came up with the most ridiculous deus ex machina of all time. I was left gob-smacked for all the wrong reasons.Worst of all, and inexcusably, Dante is a visual failure. Several bits of footage are reused at times, stock-footage style. It's very noticeable, and incredibly grating towards the end. The whole thing has the feel of a cheap afternoon TV movie despite the decent CGI.The actors are actually quite good and do the best they can to salvage this disaster. However, they can only do so much and frankly, there's very little to salvage.Avoid.

This movie looks great but there isn't anything worthwhile happening to sustain the viewer's interest for more than five minutes.It joins THX-1138, Alien 3, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Alien Nation, and The Coneheads on the list of sci-fi pictures with bald women in the cast, not very original. Having the characters bald to represent dehumanization is a stale idea whose time has past.The whole movie is as cold as outer space. Nobody in the film generates anything resembling sympathy. The whole thing is so uninteresting that I really didn't care who the stranger (in a strange land) was or how he got his mysterious powers.It's a real shame because the special effects were great, with the exception of the shots of the microscopic robots traveling through the bloodstream. They looked like they were done on a personal computer.The attempts by the director to show off were as pretentious as the movie was on a whole.