Today’s quick review: The Three Musketeers. In early 17th-century France, D’Artagnan (Logan Lerman), an impetuous country boy, seeks to join the legendary Three Musketeers: Athos (Matthew Macfadyen), Porthos (Ray Stevenson), and Aramis (Luke Evans). The four are sent to Britain by the Queen to foil a plot by Cardinal Richelieu (Christoph Waltz) to plunge the two countries into war.
The Three Musketeers is an action adventure movie that offers a fanciful take on the clasic novel by Alexandre Dumas. Apart from the usual affordances for action sequences, the film’s creative liberties include an array of improbable gadgets and an airship designed by Leonardo Da Vinci. The result is an adaptation that attempts to take swashbuckling action to new heights but falls short of its creative ambitions.
The Three Musketeers has significant weaknesses in acting, tone, and writing. The dialogue comes off generic, the characters smug. The movie shoots for a cocky, adventurous style, but it lacks the finesse to pull it off. The situation is not helped by weak performances and dubious accents. The golden ideal of adventure is visible in The Three Musketeers, exhilirating, suave, and unfettered, but its slips through the movie’s grasp.
To its credit, The Three Musketeers does a few things well. The CGI models of Paris and London used for the aerial shots are quite impressive. The action scenes, while not groundbreaking, are certainly fun. The roster of villains includes a few familiar faces: Milla Jovovich as Milady de Winter, Mads Mikkelsen as Captain Rochefort, Orlando Bloom as the Duke of Buckingham, and Christoph Waltz as Cardinal Richelieu.
Watch The Three Musketeers only if you are an adventure fan willing to accept a dip in quality for the sake of novelty. For a truer adaptation of the source material, check out one of the other movies of the same name. For another loose adaptation of a classic that better captures the tone The Three Musketeers shoots for, check out the Guy Ritchie version of Sherlock Holmes.
5.8 out of 10 on IMDB. I give it a 6.0 for free-spirited adventure hamstrung by poor execution.