I'm not sure that Alexander Dumas would recognize this version of France or his tale. The last time I watched a film based on this story it stored Keifer Sutherland and Charlie Sheen...did I make that up? It was like such a bad nightmare, barely passable American actors in frilly clothes and handling swords like they were fighting with sticks. I must ahve dreamt that, I'm sure.
I had made up my mind going into this version that I wasn't going to like it because it was going to try and be accurate, but be all in English which really bothers me for some reason - not that all the characters would speak English, but that the French would all speak English and the English would all speak English, and they would all have the same accent, and in the case of this movie, the Italians also speak English. I would then spend two hours finding little nitpicky things wrong with it and remind myself that American made movies about this period in European history are always crap because Hollywood doesn't understand how to do the period piece right.
That never happened though. Oh sure, all the nationalities of Europe speak English with the same accents in this film, but right from the beginning Athos is all Steampunk scuba diver guy, what a hundred, hundred fifty years before there would have been the steam power to hitch the punk up to? I know this movie played in theaters as a 3D film, and right from the get-go the action plays like that. What it really plays like is the Matrix - slow motion slides under a hail of spiked balls, using the chains that one is bound with to beat the enemies at hand. This is not your father's or grandfather's interpretation of the classic story.
Right at the beginning we meet Athos, so ably played by one of my favorite actors, Matthew MacFadyen. I loved him in Spooks, he was even okay in that version of Robin Hood with Russel Crowe (which was also surprisingly better than I thought it would be, but in a completely different way that this film). I even watched him in the abysmal Pillars of the Earth, which was a period piece and was very authentic, but had just a horrid and convoluted story.
And there kissing Athos is "Milady" played by Milla Jovovich. She has never let me down. Ok, I haven't seen that movie where she's on a honeymoon on Hawaii on some hike and there is a killer about, Dang, now I'm going to have to watch that, and pretty sure that will suck, but I am willing to put up with that to watch her. I don't think there is a better female action star out there, and I strongly encourage Kate Beckinsale, Michelle Yeoh, Zhang Zhi, or Charlize Theron to come to my house and set me straight. I am the proud owner of all the Resident Evil movies, and I'm not afraid to say that I think UltraViolet is best non-traditional vampire movie. So there.
This Three Musketeers is not historical as much as it is whimsical, very visually stylized that I may look back on 20 years from now and make fun of. but honestly most of the films I do that with now I made fun of when they came out, or at least when I got to see them for the first time. Take Army of Darkness for example, brilliantly funny movie - Bruce Campbell at his absolute best - and yet I am willing to admit that Bridgette Fonda's hair-do has become a hair-don't in the last 25 years. I thought it was cute then, just like I thought the cute girls I went to high school with had cute hair, but now looking back at old yearbooks, I can see how silly their hair looked.
Lately, I've been kind of down on Orlando Bloom - you may recall that I compared his portrayal of Paris with his portrayal of Legolas, and there was very little to contrast. But, he totally rocks the bad-ass bad-boy who may be opposed to the heroes but does it with style.
The weak point for me was D'Artagnon. This is not the first thing I've seen Logan Lerman in and he does a fine job, it's just that he's too damn young. Not his fault, I blame the director. I just don't buy that a 16 or 17 year old kid is pretty much the best sword fighter in Europe. Sure, I'll buy airships and hidden vaults of Da Vinci's secrets, but this is too much.
One thing I always think about every time I watch a Three Musketeers movie, any Three Musketeers movie, is what cool names Dumas came up with: Athos, Porthos, Aramis and even D'Artagnon. I salute you M. Dumas and will strive to come up with better names for the characters I write about.
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