The Musketeer Reviews

I love anachronism! If you've ever watched The Man In The Iron Mask and found yourself wishing there were more gravity-defying, Matrixy fight sequences, then this is the movie for you. The story is as engaging as any of the other musketeer movies, the villains just as slimy, the stakes just as high and the characters just as heroically iconic. Here, though, the action is a bit bigger and I found the sequences, while somewhat incongruous, even more exhilarating.

Ridiculous.....

Silly muddled version of the classic tale. Poorly acted by everyone but Tim Roth and Catherine Deneuve and she is given very little to do. Ponderous direction and murky lighting help not at all. Try one of the many other versions of the story. Even the Keifer Sutherland/Charlie Sheen version, while not terribly faithful to the book, was much better than this. At least they seemed to be having fun in that one.

At first The Musketeer may sound interesting to you, a retelling of the classic tale with a martial arts influence incorporated into the sword fights. Then you think about it for a second...and suddenly sounds shit. I have no problem with not using the correct accent in a film, but here France is a mix of French, American and English accents. This becomes very distracting and confusing when you can't work out if a character is meant to be English, or f they are French with an English accent. Even Arthur Fowler from Eastenders shows up. Justin Chambers has all the charisma and heartthrob appeal of a child murderer. Everybody else tries to keep things together but when even Tim Roth fails as a bad guy, then what hope is there? Roth may as well have had "EVIL BASTARD" stamped on his forehead. He begs and pleads to kill people because showing him kill a family in the beginning just wasn't enough. It's overkill and a mostly forgotten blemish on his career. The only interesting parts are the fighting scenes, which, had they been in a Hong Kong setting, may have worked.

No. Not a good movie. And I usually like all the musketeer movies. This one was trying to be crouching tiger and didn't care if the story was at all watchable.

Another proof that hollywood just can't do Hong Kong action well, even with help from people of that industry.

Fine adventure film focueses on the exploits of young D'Artagnan. The kung fu-style fighting scenes seem somewhat out of place, but as long as you're going to be irreverent, you might as well go all the way.

A second rate cast with a motley collection of accents flounder in a robotically directed swashbuckler that completely fails to capture the charm of Richard Lester's The Three Musketeers, or even The Man In The Iron Mask for that matter.

over the top, goofy and unrealistic

While not as good as it could have been - the action in this movie is on the level of some of the best - Hong Kong Style - for action fans!

This is another one of those 'someday someone will make a good Three Musketeers film again' situations. I have to give Peter Hyams points for trying to make this film interesting and exciting. However, it was pretty much a failure in execution. Where to start?

First of all, the deviations from the Dumas story were badly handled, and at times it began to become one of those films where they take a break from 'acting' to do some kind of fight scene. It neither looks authentic in kung fu style, nor is it particularly exciting to watch. The rest of the more traditional fighting is decent enough, but its just strung together with hammy dialogue and a meandering plot. The other musketeers are neither interesting nor helpful to D'Artagnan, (Justin Chambers) who hasn't got enough screen presence to carry the film. Mena Suvari is all forehead and no acting, and not even Catherine Deneeuve can summon much dignity out of this mess.

The look of the film is about the only thing I can say about it that positive. The costumes and sets looks pretty good, but it's a poor excuse for a film. If you're looking for some kind of diversion, and have a couple of hours to waste, this might just do it.

Story wise, it sucks, but the fighting is good-ish.

The Musketeer opens up on a young D'Artagnan as he witnesses the unprovoked murder of his parents over unpaid taxes. Little D'Artagnan is a spunky boy, and he tries to fight back but for some reason, the merciless, heartless tax-collector-cum-killer lets the little boy live. This turns out to be a big mistake as D'Artagnan is raised by his old friend Planchet (Jean-Pierre Castaldi). Becoming the finest swordsman in France, D'Artagnan tries to follow in his father's footsteps by becoming a King's Musketeer. Times are not good for these heroes though with their leader Treville (Michael Byrne) imprisoned and the evil Febre (Tim Roth) out for blood!

Anyways he meets up with Arthos, Porthos, and Aramis. The Three Musketeers were unrecognizable in the film, not the dashing heroes we're used to. They are portrayed as drunken, miserable, lazy jerks. Apparently D'Artagnan is the only one who still holds the ideals of the Musketeers. Along the way, D'Artagnan falls in love with a feisty chambermaid, Francesca, portrayed by Mena Suvari. (I had trouble accepting Mena Suvari as an eighteenth century housemaid, after seeing her in American Beauty and American Pie and here she makes a wooden and ornamental Francesca. The only saving grace about this movie was Tim Roth who makes a great "bad" guy.

We can all agree than Asian style martial arts and 17th century France, by nature, does not match. You can either choose to see this as a good thing or a bad thing. Somehow, it feels a little too over the top and artificial for a 17th century French epic. The sword fights weren't your usual prancing about, but intense and frantic; with the ladder fight scene a direct rip off from Jet Li's Once Upon A Time In China.

I'm going to be honest. I do not like this movie. The cast is excellent, as is the costume design, but that's all the nice things I can say about this movie. Putting Hong-Kong style fights in a swashbuckler is a great concept, but to be frank, the fights were badly choreographed and even more poorly shot. The script was weak in terms of character development, and the many sad attempts at one-liners come off as cheesy rather than quotable. It would've worked if the script followed Dumas books a little more closely, and if the fights were choreographed and filmed better. Sadly, however, this movie will forever remain one that had a great concept and great potential that it fell far from achieving.

With well decorated fight sequences, this movie just stays in the attempt to do something big in the book of Dumas.

Great action, but wasted cast.

One of my TRUE wordt. saw this in LA. I wa sway disappointed after all of the press it got. The commercials didn't even match the FILM!

Not just terrible the royal guard of terrible.

It should have been fantastic, but it just wasn't. There weren't enough fight scenes, the plot was shaky at best, and the cast wasn't up to par.

A sub par swashbuckling adventure. The film's final fight scene between Justin Chambers and Tim Roth was stolen directly from Jet Li's Once Upon A Time in China. The movie's story is so heavily adapted from the source material that one has to wonder if researching the film consisted of reading the Cliff's Notes for Dumas' work. The small moments of pleasure I was able to steal from this movie involved Mena Suvari and Tim Roth. Roth is a terrific actor and even in a terrible movie like this he still manages to shine. Mena Suvari is a competent actress who, in my opinion, deserves more exposure than she has received and while I wasn't impressed with her acting in this movie, I was able to glean a small degree of pleasure from watching her. There aren't many good swashbuckling films out there, but I would try to watch all the others before even considering this one.