Starring Dane DeHaan, Cara Delevingne and Clive Owen

Directed by Luc Besson

Lionsgate Home Entertainment, Out now on Digital Download and on 4K Ultra HD, 3D Blu-ray with a lenticular sleeve, Blu-ray and DVD

Luc Besson’s return to sci-fi is an agreeably bonkers, colourful yarn that doesn’t betray its pulpy origins but is somewhat let down by some of its performances.

Dane DeHaan is Major Valerian, partnered up with Cara Delevingne’s Sergeant Laureline. It’s the 24th Century and they are spatio-temporal agents sent on a mission to extract a McGuffin from an alien market which you visit by viewing through a special headset. And then the story sort of happens, or rather explodes across the screen in a bright spectrum of primary colours and CGI aliens.

DeHaan loves Delevingne, and we know this because he tells her so, not because they have anything resembling chemistry. I’m actually going to stand in Cara’s corner because she is really fun and spunky in this romp – far better than her hip-swivelling, evil sorceress in Suicide Squad – whereas DeHaan plays Valerian as dull. This is dull dialled up to 10 and he speaks like a Keanu Reeves surfer dude. He has zero credibility as a Major, and neither does Clive Owen’s boo-hiss panto baddy commander (not that he’s initially revealed to be one – but that’s hardly a spoiler once you’ve clocked his diabolical ‘tache and cape.)

Based on the French comicbook series Valérian et Laureline drawn by Jean-Claude Mézières, this was originally a strip in the anthology comic Pilote from 1967 to 2010. Besson grew up with this comic and always wanted to translate it to the big screen, and that’s why it feels very retro. This is more Flash Gordon, Star Wars Ep IV, 2000AD, prog rock album covers, Battle Beyond the Stars and Starcrash than anything 21st Century. Enhanced by a wonderful score by Alexander Desplat, giving us insight into what his Rogue One might have sounded like, this is space opera written large, with big spaceships laser bolts and robots that are as much Cylons as Maximilian from The Black Hole.

Verdict: Lacking the cynicism, meta self-consciousness and vicious streak of many modern big budget fantasy flicks, they really don’t make ’em like this any more. I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing, but it’s a glorious mess that kept me grinning. Oh, and Rihanna plays a shapeshifting burlesque dancer… 7/10

DVD extras are a 62 minute behind the scenes piece, with plenty of interview material; the Bluray (not reviewed) has “enhancement pods” which allow access to further behind the scenes features while watching.

Nick Joy