Awful acting, and no soundtrack for most of the film. There is one event that happens during the entire film and it is not dramatised in the slightest (with the least well acted punch I have ever seen in my life), it then turns out that the character does not even die and will be perfectly ok, so essentially, nothing happens. There was no differentiating factor between the TWO MAIN characters for the first hour of the film and only knew about them for the last part. The other characters are not even named… The director, Claire Denis, has attempted to be ‘quirky’ and ‘unique’ with this horrific attempt at a film and has failed miserably. In trying to be different from other films, she has utterly bored all the viewers and completely wasted an hour and a half of everybody’s life that has watched this film.

What a waste of my time. I would rather procreate with a dog than rewatch this film. Absolutely atrocious. An offence to cinematography. Not a single scene gave me pleasure, the acting was dry, and honestly i never want to see Galoup again or hear his name. I hate him. I hated the film. Never watch this film.

This might be one of the most disappointing films I’ve ever watched. Each scene is terribly performed and directed; the acting is lackluster and the film horribly attempts to build up tension (through the means of music) with no palpable climax and an ending that serves no purpose to the film whatsoever. This specific ending led me to burst out laughing - although at least this was the one piece of emotion that I felt throughout the whole 90 minutes. One could argue that the film has deeper “meanings” that can be discerned through deep analysis, yet this serves no purpose if the director went out with that sole intention.

I never knew exactly what to think about this film while watching it. Interesting, though

It's basically a French portrayal of what the opening half to Full Metal Jacket would look like if Colonel Kurtz was the drill sergeant. It's a bit drawn out and brooding.

Brilliantly shot and has a lot of truly stellar moments, but let's calm down a little people -- definitely in the great, but not THAT great category. The ending will be divisive. I get it, and I hate it, but it's not awful. It has everything you like and everything you hate about foreign films.

Claire Denis' 90's indie is meditative and highly economical. The director takes on the task of applying a narrative so small to a 90 minute runtime and actually succeeds with the immersive camerawork, African geography and naturalistic performances.

In Beau Travail, director Claire Denis seemingly sets out to establish the fine line between languid and sluggish. Set in Djibouti, a French Foreign Legion officer becomes obsessed with a new member of the unit and sets out to sabotage any opportunity the recruit may have had for attention from his superiors. While the film is wondrous to look at, capturing the raw, arid beauty of east Africa, the visuals really add nothing to the story or the development of the characters, never a good thing in a visual medium. Is the movie intriguing? At times, certainly. Is it insightful? To a degree, especially for those not familiar with the Foreign Legion. And finally: Is it engrossing? Not really, primarily because the whole thing comes across as being on the sluggish side of the line.

Watching Beau Travail is like reading a poem. It is probably the best and most calibrated deconstruction of masculinity and homoerotic repression in the military. Without the burden of carrying a message, Claire Denis breaks all conventions and moves her hypnotizing film away from what we would think it would be to tell a story like this, she risks and builds this story of desires, timeless passions, betrayal and envy full of subtle details that make it a non-linear treasure.

Beau Travail is a quiet, meditative film about the pitfalls of resentment (and homophobia caused by suppressed same-sex attraction? Like the source material, it is undeniably homoerotic).

Like any rule, the old filmmaking adage, "Show the story, don't tell it" has been dispensed with to good result on innumerable occasions. Beau Travail is not one of those occasions. Throughout the movie, we are treated to a voice over from the main character in which he tells us exactly what the conflict is and exactly how he feels about it. Why not show us? There's a story in his words that belies what we see -- a movie that contains very little tension. You'd think suspense would be inevitable, you'd have to work to suppress it, when there's a jealousy-fueled attempted murder and suicide involved. And yet these events came and went and I felt almost nothing. While what we are shown hardly counts for drama, some of the images admittedly possess a sort of numinous quality, especially when combined with the score. As an example, the platoon heads into town presumably for a night of drunken merrymaking. In the morning, the main character meanders alone in a narrow alley. In some adjacent alley, the object of his attraction and envy is carried slowly and solemnly on the shoulders of his adoring compatriots; a compelling juxtaposition of the slovenly troll and the people's comely and courageous young king. It's beautiful and it's mythical. But a mere string of such images does not a good movie make. It does probably make it worth watching though.

An army guy looks back at his glorious days when he was chief of a company, and that's basically the plot. It's not easy to hang on to, probably not linear and very quiet. Flashes of memories with added monologue and as they are connected in a way it feels like random memories. It looks really pretty and some scenes hit you pretty hard. Sadly most of them seem flat and random. I have not seen too many Claire Denis' films but this is for me interesting at best. Denis Lavant is doing a great job - he is incredibly gifted, while the rest of the actors are unknown people. OK for the looks and the craft, but the entertainment value is low and I don't dig the army thing in general so I never really felt the plot. 4.5 out of 10 dance moves.

1001 movies to see before you die. But, I don't think so. It was good to learn about the French Legionares, but this got old despite the visuals. RUS

A man that finds solace but not necessarily true satisfaction in the rigor of his military life must contend with an unexpected change to his routine that challenge his position and his interpretation of himself. The landscape is hard and unforgiving, the colors are vivid but not diverse, the existence is routine but with somewhat remote undertones of danger; it's very well shot. I'll fully admit that I'm completely unfamiliar with Melville's Billy Budd and can't comment on how well the film interprets its literary origins, but the narrative stands on its own. The implication of homosexual undertones is very nuanced, not at all explored overtly though worthy of attention, and the film's final shot provides an interesting insight into the character of Lavant's Galoup. Side note: this film is surprisingly difficult to locate in digital format virtually anywhere, despite appearing on Sight & Sound's Critics' and Directors' Polls in 2012. (4/5)

Overrated? Hard to follow at times. Not particularity well acted or edited. Overindulgent. Ce film n'est pas du bon travail.

If you enjoy homoerotic movies, this film is for you. If you don't, yet might be a fan of "2001: A Space Odyssey" but always thought agitated French Legionnaires with shovels would work better than agitated chimps with bones, than this film will definitely intrigue you. The location shots are stunning. The tanned, half-naked or naked men swimming & showering & digging ditches and then, wait for it, showering again or swimming or stretching in the dirt gets a bit repetitive. But heck, its an "artistic" French movie. What to expect? I enjoyed the spastic dancing at the end - for me, it explained a lot. There is a reason why American movies are watched the World over and some French films are viewed only in cramped art cinemas - - usually with poor ventilation or the scent of musty carpet. This is that film. Best to have a beer or two before watching.

Denis is a very provocative filmmaker. She is fearless in going for what she wants to convey; pushing the barrier to the point of making viewers feel uncomfortable, shocked, enticed, aroused in quite possibly an unsettling way. But she is always at the core of her work expressing the subtleties and extremes of what it is to be human. In this film we have Galoup (the excellent Denis Lavant), an officer in the French Foreign Legion whose commitment to the extremely disciplined order and strictures of his position has made of him such a tightly rigid, regimented man that this repression has left him joyless and seemingly unable to peel off this mental armor. With the arrival of the young charismatic Sentain, Galoup finds himself obsessed and frustrated to the point of losing grip of his self-control and perspective as a mature man dedicated to being a quality military figure and role model of sorts. Claire Denis shows us the slow degradation of a man at odds with himself as he has known. His actions to dismiss Sentain or show him in a bad light due largely to jealousy (but maybe more) and resentment ultimately work to break him down to pettiness and betrayal. The director does all this with as little dialogue as possible, letting the visual power of the human face and body language express so much. And the landscape of Djibouti, along with the beauty and wonder of its people, add even more cinematic color and presence to this remarkable film. It becomes much more than it initially seemed it would be for me. Finally, what are we to make of the 'free' man Galoup in that wholly unexpected final scene? 4 stars

Arty, speculative and pretentious.

Better than the other Denis film I've seen (L'Intrus) but I'm still mystified as to why she gets so much critical praise. Yes she knows how to create compelling images, but there's an almost complete absence of drama in her work. Apart from the last 20 minutes this was essentially like watching a very arty documentary about the Foreign Legion.

I'd have more fun watching grass grow than this piece of shit