Customer Reviews

The 4 Musketeers

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Dumas is one, particularly if you cannot do better. The authors tried to add some supernatural elements to this story and ended up with a long, disjointed film which probably would have been better as a two-parter. Further, the film is not in English. If you watch in English, the characters' lip movements and the dialogue you hear are so disjointed the effect becomes laughable. The swordplay is beyond unrealistic as well---just one of those extended play battles where the directors clearly have no clue what an actual sword battle is. Give me the original movie.

I have been an admirer of both Dumas' novel and the lovely Emmanuelle Beart for many years. I was therefore overjoyed when I saw this film on the shelf. Sadly, it is the very worst sort of dreck. The filmmakers decided to "improve upon" Dumas' story by introducing supernatural sorcery, and Hong Kong wire work for the swordfights. Madame Beart portrays Milady De Winter as Satanically-possessed (I must assume that the producers were too). The film is only available as a dubbed-in English version, which adds a measure of hilarity. There are so many versions of Dumas' novel, but only one that is worth seeing: the Three/Four Musketeers films of 1973/74, starring Charlton Heston and Michael York.

"D'Artagnan et les trois mousquetaires," pawned off on this side of the Atlantic as "The 4 Musketters," represents a most curious approach to the classic tale by Alexandre Dumas père. Actually, that is too kind, because this 2005 French film makes a bunch of mistakes. But since there are four musketeers, let us limit ourselves to the four biggest mistakes:

First, the film is dubbed. Not "dubbed" as in you can listen to it in English if you want to refrain from reading the subtitles because they are speaking French, but rather "dubbed" as in that is your only option. Remember all those dubbed foreign films you used to make fun of when you were growing up? Well, the dubbing in this film sounds that ludicrous, and the result is that your are unnecessarily distanced from the film as soon as the characters start talking.

Second, this film is the attempt to do the martial arts version of the story. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with that idea, but the execution here is not particularly inspired. I did not check out the credits but whoever was responsible for the wirework in this film must have been relatively inexperienced in that regard because this is nowhere near the state of the art in that area of fight choreography. The net result is another major distraction because even if you accept the idea that this kind of action can work in this movie (which I am willing to go along with), the execution makes it seem like a bad idea.

Third, the film gets Emanuelle Béart ("Manon of the Spring") to play Milady Winter, which is a good thing, but then decides that the character is not simply evil, wicked, bad, mean and nasty, inside she is possessed by devil. I understand that Cardinal Richelieu (Tchéky Karyo) is the villain of the piece and interested more in power politics than spreading the gospel, but I think working so close to Satan is a bit much. There is also a way in which it undercut the whole idea that Milady Winter was a villainess, because now she is succeeding because she is Satan's spawn and not because she is a woman with a brain carving out her own little place in the world at the expense of every man she can take advantage of along the way.

Fourth, the final straw for me is that film, which despite the above, does try to strike to the key elements of the novel, ends too soon. Most versions of "The Three Musketeers" never get to the whole trial of Milady Winter (I never saw it until Richard Lester's "The Four Musketeers" in 1974, which is the point that I understood most versions of the novel were always condensed versions). But that is not the end of the story, which includes my favorite moment, which is when Richelieu drags D'Artagnan before him for the death of Milady and our young hero hands over the Cardinal's carte blanche order, "By my order, and for the good of the state, the bearer has done what has been done." Having sat through this 210-minute film without having become engaged in the narrative, having the credits role before getting to what I consider to be the "good part" only confirmed my impulse to round down rather than up.

The cast has Vincent Elbaz as D'Artagnan, Gregory Gadebois as Porthos, Gregori Derangre as Aramis, and Heino Ferch as Athos, and the main thing to be said for them is that they look nice but never strike me as being particular dashing. The whole idea is that you watch these guys and you want to be D'Artagnan and run off to be a Musketeer, but that never happens (the old guys in "The Man in the Iron Mask" had more panache). Stefania Rocca does a nice job as Anne D'Autriche as does Diana Amft as Constance, and since the problem is the way Béart's character is written and not her performance, the actresses come out ahead of the actors in this one. Tritan Ulloa's Louis XIII is not portrayed as a comically inept monarch for once and Matthew Chambers as the Duke of Buckingham does a decent job of keeping his character in the real world, which just makes the whole idea of Milady as a possessed ninja stand out even more as a strategic and tactical error.

I'm a big Dumas fan so I was looking forward to this but;

1. The writers have taken too many liberties with the original story. If they had called it something else and not associated it with the Dumas story it would have still been dreck.

2. I'm not sure what language this is in, but I'm unable to view it in its original language with subtitles, so it sounds like a bad kung-fu movie.

3. I didn't think there could be any worse portrayal of this story when I saw the Disney/Sutherland/Sheen version until I saw the John Woo Musketeer version. Now I have seen a new low.

Avoid at all costs if you are a Dumas fan.

There is a surreal aspect to this version of the Dumas classic that might remind one a bit of "Le Pacte des Loups" ("The Brotherhood of the Wolf). Interestingly enough, similar complaints were made of the length of that movie and some of the effects. In any case, the plotline holds up well but the dubbed English version is almost painful to hear. Both Emmanuelle Béart and Tchéky Karyo can speak Engish- at least they should've been allowed to use their own voices with English speaking actors OR let the film stand with the actors in it (who were good!) and leave it in French with subtitles. Dubbing isn't simply an annoying distraction but it also impedes the performance. Delivery of a line, nuances of the voice- all that is lost in dubbing and diminishes the effect the actors are trying to create. Regardless, the film did have its moments and if an original language version could be made, I'd jump my rating up to 4 or 4.5 in a snap.
A Dumas purist might not like the movie anyway but it was entertaining and did reflect a lot of the spirit of the Musketeers. In addition to the fine performances by Béart and Karyo, the actors playing d'Artagnan and Constance also did an excellent job.

Two things happened in popular filmmaking in 2003. The final Lord of the Rings film came out, and the first Pirates of the Caribbean film also came out. Both got good reviews, won awards, and made a mint. Both films swashed buckles in the bargain. It didn't take canny film producers long to connect out-of-copyright swashbuckling properties with hobbits and pirates. There was no point in doing another standard adaptation of the Three Musketeers and d'Artagnan; we have quite enough of them. So they did a loose adaptation with some major twists. The film was released in two parts in Europe at varying lengths, but it was shortened (to three hours) and released to DVD on one disc in North America for popular audiences. It's not marketed as an art film in the original French, with English subtitles the average film viewer won't read. That doesn't mean the film isn't artistic. Its production design is tops, with gorgeous landscapes and exterior shots of skies and seas throughout (and showing the influence of films like Barry Lyndon). The special effects are state of the art. The actors are excellent, as are hair and makeup (two elements of mise-en-scene often underestimated in the impact they have on period look). As with other recent big-budget action films, the score gets poured on like viscous syrup (I'm not a fan of the John Williams-ization of film scores), but I just tuned it out. The biggest difference between this and earlier Musketeers film adaptations is the decision to script this one as a dark fantasy. The MacGuffin here is the Faustian pact with the devil made by the woman who becomes Milady. It's an outrageous conceit, but the film pulls it off by playing it seriously rather than for camp. Not that there isn't some cheesiness (the white hawk that appears at symbolic moments is a bit much), but I don't mind that in a film meant to entertain and bewitch. I'll say one more thing: despite her being the heavy, I thought the film belonged to Milady, who's the key to all the plots and who makes the characters dance to her tune before the end. Even in 2005, films like this were shedding the patriarchal trappings of their forebears. This film predicts what happened to Elizabeth Swann, who by 2007 had become the Pirate King. Not recommended to purists; others should be able to enjoy it for what it is: a rousing good time.

First of all, let me say that whether a movie has the same plot as a book by the same name is of no importance to me. The fact that the movie does not tell the same story as the book should never be considered in any review of any movie in my opinion, just as the movie should not be used as a reference to decide the value of any book. So, when deciding not to watch this movie, nobody needs that sort of thing as a reason. There are plenty of other reasons to miss this one.

While pretending to be a movie about good vs. evil, it is actually about evil vs. evil, and the triumph of the worst evil. Every character in the movie is morally decadent, without a single exception. No character in the movie is even true to what his/her actions and motivations would logically be within the context set up by the movie, except possibly the woman possessed by the devil.

Here are a couple of examples of what this movie is like:

1. The main character, whom we are supposed to admire as the hero of the story, D'Artagnan, enters an Inn looking for a room. He immediately "falls in love" with the wife of the inn-keeper, and she obviously reciprocates. The same night they begin a "love" affair in front of the spying eyes of the husband, who learns of their passionate activities by spying on them through holes he has made in the walls. The betrayed inn-keeper then goes to the local Bishop who is in league with satan (and who is somehow in charge of the Royal Army) and betrays his wife and her lover for a bag of gold coins. He in turn is then betrayed by the Bishop who has him thrown into prison on his way home. Once he is in prison, his wife and D'Artagnan, who do not ever notice he is missing, take their passionate groping and kissing into the streets, with nobody questioning their public adultery.

2. A Jesuit Priest who is the local "authority" on satanic possession is enlisted to help rid Milady Winter of the demons that control her. He is depicted as a disheveled madman who threatens to kill people, talks about the souls of innocent children being lost to hell forever, and who uses sorcery, magic spells and complex mechanical devices to try to fight the devil (no - I am not kidding). He demonstrates his recently invented shirt-sleeve concealable crossbow with anti-devil magic potion tipped dart by shooting it into the face of a religious statue in his Church. He, a Priest, never considers God or prayer as possible solutions to this evil.

A character in disguise attempts to commit a murder, and then removes her disguise. It is a latex rubber full-head and neck mask that she rips off and throws onto a table, like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible. Never mind the 500 year anachronistic oops - she supposedly manufactured this perfect likeness of the prison warden (a Puritan preacher) while all alone in an empty cell.

To sum up, if you don't mind putting up with 3 full hours of bad acting, incoherent storyline, second rate CGI effects, third rate martial arts fighting and boring repetitive music - and you love anti-Catholic, blasphemous skin-flicks that have no good guys and the worst bad guy wins in the end, this movie is for you.

I wish I could give it less that one star, but that is not allowed. This film earns my ultimate bad-movie rating, plunging all the way to the bottom of the heap and beating out the former worst movie of all time, "Facing Fear", while pushing "Blood In, Blood Out" into third place.

Wow, long movie, great footage, fantastic twist on the story!
The lip-syncing was evident throughout as it wasn't a native English flick but definately worthy of any Musketeers fan collection!