Review: The Musketeer (2001)

This is a Resurfaced review written in 2002 or earlier. For more information, please visit this link: Resurfaced Reviews.

The Musketeer

Rating

Director

Peter Hyams

Screenplay

Gene Quintano (Novel: Alexandre Dumas père)

Length

1h 44m

Starring

Catherine Deneuve, Mena Suvari, Stephen Rea, Tim Roth, Justin Chambers, Bill Treacher, Daniel Mesguich, David Schofield, Nick Moran, Steve Speirs, Jan-Gregor Kremp, Jeremy Clyde, Michael Byrne

MPAA Rating

PG-13

Review

“The Three Musketeers” has long been a classic of adventure storytelling. This telling of the story maintains the sense of adventure, but never captures the heart.

Justin Chambers is D’Artagnan, a young boy whose parents were killed savagely by a ruthless expatriate called Febre (eternally villainous Tim Roth), who has decided to become one of the King of France’s royal Musketeers.

Upon arrival he discovers that the Musketeers have been disbanded and that many of the former talents of the empire have been reduced to drunken commoners. They do, however, attempt to be civil, providing him letters of reference to stay free at a local hostile. There he meets Constance (Mena Suvari), a young courtesan’s daughter. Her mother was a servant to the Queen (Catherine Deneuve) but died when Constance was young.

Much of the backstabbing is begun by the distrustful Cardinal Richelieu (Stephen Rea) who has hired Febre to strike terror into the people and cause distrust in the King so that he may have more control.

The film is quite basic in its storytelling, a problem that reveals itself early on. The plot is pedestrian and uninspired. The only true marvel in the film is the gravity-defying choreography of Hong Kong fight designer Xin Xin Xiong. There are three basic scenes that he focuses on. One is amongst barrels at a tavern, one is along the face of a castle’s tower and the other is in a room filled with ladders. All three scenes are spoiled in the previews and rather uninteresting once you’ve seen them done. One other scene, in a kitchen, does bear mention, as it isn’t foreshadowed in a preview, but still not terribly interesting.

The big problem with the film is that it blends two diametrically opposed styles of filmmaking. The action adventure film of swashbuckling and daring mixed with the complex choreography and style of the martial arts style. To an extent the two mesh, but when you watch them together, it jolts you out of the reality of the film, a dangerous event in filmmaking.

If it weren’t for the choreography and the acting, the film would be a waste. Unfortunately, even the acting isn’t all it needs to be. Deneuve and Rea are the best performers on the screen and while they are terrific actors in virtually everything they do, they both feel trapped in a mélange of amateurs. Roth has played too many villains not to feel redundant and Suvari is too modern to fit her role, despite being a decent actress. The musketeers try their best to elicit good performances, but even they are slaves to a director bent on action over performance and plot.

“The Musketeer” is a modest mess of a film. It’s not horrendously bad, but it’s not extremely good. It’s a mediocre art piece that would deserve a place in neither any major museum, nor a second rate gallery. It merely exists for its own sake. Audiences who care little for story and even less for performances will flock to this film simply for its marvelous fights, an unnecessary byproduct.