YMMV / Vidocq

• Awesome Music: The soundtrack, as well as the ending theme played by Apocalyptica, "Hope Vol.2".
• Complete Monster: The Alchemist, aka Etienne Boisset, is a masked, giggling lunatic stalking the streets of Paris, murdering seemingly at random. The truth is far worse: the Alchemist has been alive since medieval times, having discovered how to entrap the souls of his victims in reflective surfaces to fuel his immortality. What's more, the creation of the mask is even more horrible, requiring multiple virgins to be slaughtered and tortured to death while their blood is used to temper the mask, with the process requiring a repetition every so often. When unmasked, the Alchemist also kills Vidocq's partner and tries to murder Vidocq, intending to wipe out any clues to his existence and fade into myth again with no remorse whatsoever for his deeds.
• Narm: The flashbacks of Lafitte, Belmont and Veraldi acquiring young virgins for their wicked plans would be dark and creepy... if not for the unexplained, staggeringly ridiculous costumes they are wearing, which stand out even within the film's Baroque style. Their headwear is probably the worst, given that one of them wears a huge leopard bearskin, other a Renaissance-like cavalry helm, and the last one an oriental turban.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Some viewers were left unsatisfied with the inclusion of supernatural elements like the Alchemist's mask in a film that could have worked without it, not less by how quickly a man of science like Vidocq deduces the magic and accepts it with no problem. The later film The Emperor of Paris precisely aimed at being more grounded and truer to history.

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