The Musketeer (2001) Catherine Deneuve, Justin Chambers, Mena Suvari, Stephen Rea, Tim Roth, Daniel Mesguich Movie Review

The Musketeer (2001)   2/52/52/52/52/5


Justin Chambers in The Musketeer (2001)

The Broken Sword

14 years after helplessly watching his parents killed by Febre the Man in Black (Tim Roth) D'Artagnan (Justin Chambers) has become a skilled young swordsman but one driven by a burning desire to avenge his parent's murder. But the country is a changing place and D'Artagnan finds himself joining sides as the civil unrest worsens. He also finds himself falling for a fiery peasant girl by the name of Francesca (Mena Suvari) who works for the Queen (Catherine Deneuve).

Let me imagine what might have happened; director Peter Hyams picks up the phone and is asked if he would be interested in a directing a new adaptation of Alexandre Dumas' famous Three Musketeer storyline at which point Peter questioned why when the storyline had already been done many times. And the answer was simply we are not bothered about telling the story this version will be all about the big action scenes, bigger than anything which had been done before. Look, I am just speculating but it is about the only explanation I can come up with as to why this 2001 version of the Musketeer storyline exists as it is certainly not for the acting or story.

Mena Suvari in The Musketeer (2001)

To be honest if I was to judge "The Musketeers" solely on how well it tells the story I would have to say it does so terribly as sadly it seems to have become just filler in between the action scenes. It also doesn't help that you have a cast of actors who seem like they are just going through the motions, delivering lines in some thing close to an accent but failing to bring the characters to life. And in truth some of the acting is so terribly weak and soulless it gets to the point that even I, someone who hated acting in school, could have delivered it with more conviction and emotion.

But "The Musketeers" is clearly only about the look which goes from some pretty decent sets, some surprisingly nice use of light and shadow to deliver classy images and of course the action. Now I wouldn't say that "The Musketeers" is a swashbuckler as it is all out action which breaks the laws of physics to deliver spectacular on a massive scale. Sadly whilst there is no doubt the action is big and creative its ridiculous nature ends up just adding to the ridiculous nature of this movie.

What this all boils down to is that "The Musketeer" didn't do it for me and was simply a movie which seems to only care about how spectacular the action is. Maybe if I was younger and only interested in action, which breaks the laws of physics, then maybe it might have entertained but as an adult it didn't.


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