Three Musketeers series

  • The Musketeer (2001)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, August 2022) Every era gets the Three Musketeers film adaptation that they deserve, and so the early 2000s were about personal heroics and wire-fu action sequences. Directed by Peter Hyams (still a solid action director at the time, albeit definitely losing his touch), this version of Dumas’ d’Artagnan cycle differs from others in three main ways: it focuses on D’Artagnan to the comical downplaying of the other musketeers, creates an action villain out of Richelieu’s shadow and integrates some 1990s Hong Kong action movie clichés into the inevitable action sequences. (Alas, this is only fully realized in the wild ending action scene set in a ladder-laden warehouse—the rest of The Musketeer is more sedate.)  Digital production techniques are also used to give a more convincing sheen to the historical re-creation, although it doesn’t compare to the work later overseen by Paul W. S. Anderson in his steampunk 2011 version of the same source material. You would think that Hyams plus Hong Kong wire-work plus the innate appeal of Dumas’s novel would inevitably lead to something at least mildly enjoyable… but no. The result is both dull and incoherent, briefly coming to life in its final action sequence, which is far too late to five a good overall impression. Justin Chamber is a dud as d’Artagnan, although some of the cast around him (Tim Roth, Stephen Rea, Mena Suvari, Catherine Deneuve) does have some appeal. It seems amazing that a film would do so little with what it had at its disposal, but there you go—it’s neither the most faithful, the most fun, the most spectacular or the most well-rounded version of the Dumas novel. If you see The Musketeer somewhere and must see it, fast-forward to the final action sequence and you will have experienced the best that the film has to offer.

  • The Three Musketeers (1973)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, August 2022) I’m a bit… vexed in trying to write a review of the 1973 version of The Three Musketeers—not because there isn’t anything to say, but because I have the feeling I could just copy and paste my review of its second half, The Four Musketeers, and it would apply just as well to this first film. Maybe a summary? Let’s try this: Every era gets the Three Musketeers adaptation it deserves, and this early-1970s is almost exactly what we’d expect from the era: colour cinematography, lavish costumes, plenty of on-location shooting, but blurry image quality, not-quite-there action choreography, and a sometimes-scattered script. It’s less impressive on a sword-fighting level than previous entries, more in terms of immersion, and far more in terms of humour, especially the pedigree of director Richard Lester (who first intended the project to be a Beatles vehicle). Perhaps the most seventies element of the film is the cast, which merrily has Oliver Reed, Raquel Welch, Richard Chamberlain, Michael York, Christopher Lee, Faye Dunaway and Charlton Heston in the various roles. That’s… quite a cast, and it’s not a cast that could have been assembled at any other time but the early 1970s. (Although, yes, many reunited fifteen years later to film The Return of the Musketeers.) The result is rather enjoyable. It doesn’t have the sweeping cinematography of other attempts, nor the delirious special effects of the 2011 version or Gene Kelly’s athleticism of the 1948 version, or the pure swashbuckling of the Douglas Fairbanks’ 1921 take. But it’s reasonably close to the text (especially if you watch it with its concluding instalment The Four Musketeers), technically proficient enough and tonally consistent with the text. It’s hard to ask for much more… except, perhaps, the newest generation iteration on the same tale, filtered through today’s sensibilities.

  • The Four Musketeers (1974)

    The Four Musketeers (1974)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) There are informal series of remakes out there that become generational touch points of sorts. Well-known stories are reinterpreted every few years with a new crop of actors, giving us a glimpse at how each era makes its movies. The generational updates to dramas such as Little Women and A Star is Born certainly count, but Alexandre Dumas’ Les Trois Mousquetaires is in a category of its own. As an adventure with strong dramatic content, the Musketeers story can be adapted to a variety of contexts, either as out-and-out action spectacles, as costume dramas, or as classic swashbuckling adventures. Actors as different as Douglas Fairbanks, Gene Kelly and Luke Evans have played in well-known versions of The Three Musketeers, and the 1974 version fits right in the middle of 1970s Hollywood. To be fair, this is the second half of a story begun with 1973’s The Three Musketeers, so the comparisons are not exact — this film covers the second half of the Dumas novel that often gets short thrift in other adaptations. (Something not apparent to viewers is how both movies were originally conceived as one and led to movie contract history — with producers splitting the film in two during production, and getting in such incredible judicial problems regarding the cast and crew contracts that the film led to the imposition of the SAG’s “Salkind Clause” to prevent such shenanigans from happening again.)  Watching The Four Musketeers isn’t as much about the story as it is about how they made mid-budget adventure spectacles in the 1970s — with an all-star cast of actors such as Michael York, Oliver Reed, Richard Chamberlain, Charlton Heston, Faye Dunaway, Christopher Lee and Raquel Welch (!!!), a director like Richard Lester (who was still a few years away from superstardom as Superman director) and expansive European on-location shooting. Alas, movies from the 1970s also share the putrid cinematography of the time, with flat colours, dull images and perfunctory sets. I’m not interested in whether the entire shoot was done under overcast weather — I’m interested in the results, and they are as gray and featureless as the story should be vivacious and fun. Some biting dialogue and voice-overs make the film almost as interesting as the Dumas original, but the impression left by this film is one of heaviness and gracelessness: the action sequences pale in comparison to other adaptions of the story, and even the star-power can’t quite elevate the material. I may, however, be interested in watching the film again as part of a double feature with the original. While it’s fun to watch a musketeer film that pays attention to the often-neglected second half of the novel, I probably would have had more fun in watching the introduction first. Still, I did like to see that cast with that story, and in this regard The Four Musketeers does achieve its goal of being one more entry in a century-old conversation between Hollywood and Dumas’ novel.