Fall is here and it really depresses me. I was hoping for a couple more weeks of warm weather but the chill is starting to set in. It's now time for the Fall Extravaganza of films to begin and our first offering is another retelling of the Three Musketeers. This must be the sixth or seventh interpretation. I'm starting to lose count. I remember the one from the 70's which was kind of silly but fun with that eras heartthrobs: Oliver Reed as Athos, Richard Chamberlain as Aramis and Michael York as D'Artagnan. Then you had the equally silly one from the 90's with that generation of heartthrobs: Keifer Sutherland as Athos, Charlie Sheen as Aramis and Chris O'Donnell as D'Artagnan. I do enjoy both of them in different ways. I love a good swashbuckler and the Three Musketeers is a fun series. I even enjoyed the one in the late 90's about the older Musketeers called the Man in the Iron Mask. The problem with yet another remake is the predictability factor and unfortunately this one suffers from it greatly. The other is trying to be too clever with it in an attempt to be unpredictable, sadly I have to say again, this movie suffers from that problem as well.
It is the 17th Century and apparently the Musketeers serve their king not only as loyal bodyguards but as MI-6 like assassins. The film begins with Athos (Matthew MacFadyen); scuba diving and breaking into a compound in Venice, Italy not unlike James Bond in Goldfinger. Yes I said scuba diving in the 17th Century, but lets press on. Aramis (Luke Evans) bungee jumping into action and Porthos (Ray Stevenson), he appears to have been captured but rips the chains from the walls and defeats his attackers. It would seem like a fun kick ass opening and it did look pretty cool if it just didn't feel so incredibly stupid. But the best part, or I probably should say worst part, about this opening was watching Milady de Winter (Milla Jovovich) doing her Resident Evil Matrix slow-mo, avoiding multiple blasts, thing. It is after this scene we realize that this film has no fucking chance of making any real sense.
The Assassin Milady turns on her supposed allies the Musketeers as she takes the plans for Da Vinci's flying Zeppelins. Thus we fast forward to a year later where the Musketeers are in pitiful shape and in need of some cheering. They meet a young lad looking to join the Musketeers named D'Artagnan (Logan Lerman). At this point the script follows the plot of previous Musketeer storylines with D'Artagnan in all of his hot-headed glory challenges all three Musketeers to a sword fight. Before they can have that duel they find a common enemy in the evil Cardinal Richelieu's head of the Guards, Rochefort (Mads Mikkelson). The Musketeers fight they find common purpose and they attempt, with the help of their new friend D'Artagnan to defend the King from the plots of Richelieu (Christoph Waltz) and the poufy hair of the Duke of Buckingham (Orlando Bloom).
Was it an awful film, no, it did have it's fun points and that is mostly with the Musketeers themselves. I thought with the material they had to work with they did the best they could. But that script, oh, it was something terrible, I didn't expect much from this movie but I had hoped with this cast that they would be able to keep it coherent. That was asking for too much. Honestly they should have just made it a modern retelling because that's really what the script was for the most part. Other than the costumes I don't think there was any way they could have convinced an audience that this was supposed to be the 17th Century. For this I lay most of the blame on it's director the very awful Paul W.S. Anderson. This guy can barely make a good video game movie what makes you think he can take on a literary classic, especially one that has plenty of other better versions to compare it to. On the one hand it looked very pretty and the 3D was pretty good but at about the mid-way point I found myself not caring very much. If you are bored and for some reason you can't see something better like Real Steel, Moneyball or the Ides of March, then go and check it out. Otherwise I would wait for Immortals.
Grade: 2 Buckets
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