The Musketeer
*
Cinema Releases - June 21, 2002
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate PG.
Germany-Luxembourg-USA. 104 minutes. Directed by Peter Hyams. Written by
Gene Quintano; based on the writing of Alexandre Dumas. Starring Justin Chambers,
Tim Roth, Mena Suvari, Catherine Deneuve, Steven Rea, Steve Speirs, Nick
Moras, Jan Gregor Kremp, David Schofield.
Peter Hyams has directed bad movies before, but
they have at least been slick. "The Musketeer" is incompetent.
It feels so uninvolving that you forget it as you're watching. The photography
is dank, the actors move like stand-ins and the storytelling is so poor that
no matter how many times we may have witnessed the Three Musketeers tale,
we still manage to lose our bearings. Alexandre Dumas would be rolling around
in his grave if this movie were lively enough to wake him up.
Justin Chambers plays D'Artagnan, who departs
the village of Gascogne to head for Paris, join the king's guard and use
his battles as a means of finding the man who killed his father. Chambers
has such a lack of screen presence that I struggle to recall his face, and
he here has nothing to do but recite a few clichés about the honour
of France and his dreams of becoming a great warrior.
A few minutes after arriving in his nation's capital,
D'Artagnan stumbles into Aramis, Athos and Porthos, who seem less like swordsmen
in a bad way than delusional hoboes whose glory days must have involved waving
around bottles with jagged edges. Nick Moran, Jan Gregor Kremp and Steve
Speirs don't seem to be able to settle into their costumes; they fidget,
mumble, grunt and grope. Musketeer training ain't what it used to
be.
Eventually, there are action sequences. There
is a riot at a royal banquet where we can see tight shots of extras squeezing
against each other and trying to look disorganised (it's supposed to be a
stampede, I think). There are two hilarious climactic fights, one featuring
men dangling from a tower on ropes and trying to swipe swords in any direction,
the other showing two men standing on opposite ends of a ladder as it rests
on a beam and bobs up and down. The swordfighting in the movie switches between
clumsy running and chopsocky hyperactivity, and despite supervision by legendary
Hong Kong choreographer Xin Xin Xong, it is incomprehensible. Did it never
occur to the filmmakers that the moves of Asian martial artists might not
look right when performed by unsure 17th Century Europeans?
Tim Roth is fun to watch; he has an evil glee
about him similar to that of his performance in "Rob Roy", and he seems to
be rambling into space, trying to amuse himself. On the other hand, "The
Musketeer" is the first movie I have seen that reduces Catherine Deneuve
to crawling around in a sewer and shouting, "Allo?" Allo?!" C'est merde,
bien sur.
COPYRIGHT©
2002 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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