COURTESY PHOTO, Columbia Pictures

Luc Besson's "The Messenger" follows a made-for-TV mini-series based on the life of Joan of Arc.

French filmmaker Luc Besson, whose directing credits include "La Femme Nikita," "The Professional" and "The Fifth Element," works in a style that is so purely visual, dialogue is hardly necessary. The first 30 minutes of his newest film, "The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc" convey an impressive amount of information with scarcely a word.

A pre-teen Joan, played by Milla Jovovich, is introduced as a passionately devout Catholic girl who believes she receives messages from God. She is a girl whose love of France and feelings toward the British are cemented when she sees invading soldiers kill her sister.

It's breathtaking stuff; Besson fills up a wide-screen format with hair-raising action, battle scenes on the level of "Braveheart," dream-like compositions and extravagant symbolism. This symbolism shows itself in scenes such as when young Joan drinks sacramental wine and leaving stains on her face that foreshadow the bloodshed she will later unleash.

Jovovich, Besson's now estranged wife, whose performances in films like "Return to the Blue Lagoon" and Besson's "The Fifth Element" can generously be said to have ranged in quality from embarrassing to sexy, has now been asked to inhabit one of the most complex psyches in history. Was Joan divinely inspired, as the church that assisted in her execution now insists, or psychotic? The movie leaves it to the viewer to decide, but watching Jovovich makes us wonder if both views arenıt inflated: perhaps she was just an over-heated Catholic teenager, like a militaristic Mary Katherine Gallagher.

Skipping over most of her childhood, "Messenger" sends the 17-year-old Joan directly to the dauphin (John Malkovich, mesmerizing and obnoxious), to announce her intention to save France and see him crowned king. Ignoring the protests of his advisers, he follows the self-serving advice of his mother-in-law, played by a scary Faye Dunaway, and commissions Joan to lead a tired, frustrated army at British-occupied Orleans. Be prepared for grisly battle scenes and an abundance of hacked limbs and decapitations.

The final third of the film pauses for a soul-searching session between Joan and her envisioned moral compass (Dustin Hoffman, looking hauntingly monkish) while she awaits the heresy trial that would sentence the suddenly expendable warrior to death.

Jovovich arrives on screen six months after the affecting turn of Leelee Sobieski, the first teenage actress to play Joan, in the TV mini-series "Joan of Arc." But while the slender, Ukrainian-born

spokeswoman for L'Oreal throws herself into the fray, Jovovich's limited range works against her. She shrieks, her voice breaking, her eyes big and wild. It's a one-note portrayal of Joan of Arc as a panicked loon.

But then the frequently banal script doesn't help. The English are uniformly and broadly portrayed as villainous louts, and todayıs four-letter oaths sound laughably anachronistic coming out of 15th-century mouths.

"The Messenger" represents typical Besson: intensely visual splendor, great supporting actors but major flaws in the script and lead roles. This film is eye candy, nothing more.