Director: Paul W. S. Anderson
Writer: Andrew Davies
Writer: Andrew Davies
Alex Litvak
Starring: Logan Lerman
Starring: Logan Lerman
Milla Jovovich
Matthew Macfadyen
Ray Stevenson
Luke Evans
Mads Mikkelsen
Gabrielle Wilde
James Corden
Juno Temple
Freddie Fox
Orlando Bloom
Christoph Waltz
Rating: *
When I first heard about this film my initial thought was, REALLY?!?! And I was right to think that way, I really was.
We know the premise, D'Artagnan (Lerman) journeys to Paris to join the Musketeers, but on his travels he meets the best (and baddest) of all of them, Athos (Macfadyen), Porthos (Stevenson) and Aramis (Evans). Together they join forces and take down the enemies together. Along the way they are helped by Planchet (Corden), their bumbling servant and Constance (Wilde) the King and Queen's (Fox & Temple) maid, who are there for some comedy and a bit of eye candy, respectively.
The enemies we are given are the diabolical Cardinal Richelieu (Waltz), his henchman Rochefort (Mikkelsen), a conniving Milady de Winter (Jovovich) and the King of England's arrogant emissary, The Duke of Buckingham (Bloom). All your typical moustache twirling stock character villains who are uninteresting and boring. It is a good cast but it really doesn't work, it all feels lazy and as if nobody really cared about it at all. Any attempt at comedy falls flat, and because it has been seen so many times you get bored of the story as soon as the movie kicks off. I must note that Milla Jovovich cannot act, whether it was the script or this movie I don't know, but she was all over the place and really distracting. Also Orlando Bloom was almost billed as the main star of the movie, but he appears in 3-4 scenes if I remember rightly, so not that important to be perfectly honest.
The action scenes are good, and the fights are well choreographed and brilliantly performed, but action and fighting does not a movie make. It is badly put together and all in all a luke warm film. After a novel by Alexandre Dumas and over 20 different film versions of this story, I really don't think this film was at all necessary and there is no room for it anywhere at the moment. We have decent swashbuckling films in Pirates of the Caribbean (which Bloom should never have abandoned) and this film just seemed pointless and out of place at this moment in time. It does not compare to the extremely popular 1973 version starring Michael York, and if you want to see a film version of the world famous novel watch that. It is out in cinemas now, but like I have just said it is a better use of your money to pick up the 73 version, trust me.
The Three Musketeers - Trailer
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