The Three Musketeers

If you’ve seen the trailer, you probably know that The Three Musketeers is a film largely uninterested in close adherence to its source text. The promotional campaign for the film has devoted itself largely to the massive airships and airborne battles that provide the movie with its defining set pieces and most distinctive imagery. There’s really no precedent for these machinations in the work of Alexander Dumas, but even if you took out the flying machines and other chronologically incongruous technology, this is still a film that plays fast and loose with its own origins. Some of the basic plot elements are here. There is plenty of swashbuckling, and, of course, the “all for one and one for all” tagline.

And if that kind of thing bothers you, then by all means, stay as far away from The Three Musketeers as possible. You’ll have a hard time viewing it as anything but a desecration of a sacred text. Personally, I don’t much care about how faithful this work is or isn’t to its source material, any more than I did with Guy Ritchie’s riffing on Sherlock Holmes. In both cases, literary adaptation seems wholly beside the point. These movies take some familiar tropes and trappings, stylize them, and turn them into action movies. I’m perfectly content with that.

(L-R) RAY STEVENSON, MATTHEW MACFADYEN, LOGAN LERMAN AND LUKE EVANS star in THE THREE MUSKETEERS 3D. Ph: Rolf Konow, SMPSP © 2011 Constantin Film Produktion GmbH, NEF Productions, S.A.S., and New Legacy Film Ltd. All rights reserved.

Ray Stevenson, Matthew MacFadyen, Logan Lerman, and Luke Evans

What I am a bothered by is how poorly executed this particular version is. Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, who also did the Resident Evil movies, this is a picture that’s filled with ideas, so it’s never boring and never feels lazy or phoned in. It’s the best kind of bad movie: One that really seems to be trying for something, but misfires at every level, its plot points never interlocking and its characters never connecting. But it’s fun to look at. And despite its vague whiff of Ritchie’s Holmes movie and slo-mo action scenes recalling Wanted or The Matrix, it never feels like something we’ve seen before.

The film, like the book, takes place in the 17th century. England and France are at war, and, given that the film takes place almost entirely in France yet all its characters, including French royalty, speak the Queen’s English, things don’t seem to be going so well for the French. The nation’s emblems of heroism, the titular musketeers, are a bunch of drunken brawlers who are now known less for their acts of nobility than for their local rabble-rousing. As one of them puts it, there are simply no good causes left for them to believe in.

Orlando Bloom as the Duke of Buckingham

A cocky young swashbuckler named d’Artagnan falls in with them, and very quickly a cause presents itself. They are to go to England, break into the Tower of London, and steal back a set of the Queen of France’s jewelry. It has been placed there, you see, by Milady, a double agent who is working for the French Cardinal in an effort to usurp the king. In Dumas’ book, it makes sense; it’s presented here in a way that makes it all seem pretty preposterous, but this isn’t really a movie you go to see for the plot anyway.

I don’t mind the conception of this thing. I mind the way it plays out on screen. Much of that is because Anderson has never been particularly interested in finding a good script. Here’s how bad the writing in this movie is: During what is supposed to be one of the most emotionally resonant scenes, a character opines that life is both “too long and too short” to go through it alone. Somewhere in the middle, I guess, and all this would be a bit more bearable. And young d’Artagnan’s roguish wit is summarized when he tells a young lady that he is cocky “only on Tuesdays and in the presence of beautiful women.” “You must think I’m beautiful,” she speculates. But no, he tells her, it just happens to be Tuesday.

Milla Jovovich as Milady de Winter

What’s worse than the dialogue is the fact that none of the characters are ever able to be anything more than cartoons, which is a shame, because at times the movie tries to make their stories resonate. I don’t fault the actors for this; Mads Mikkelsen (the bad guy from Casino Royale) and Christoph Waltz (the bad guy from Inglorious Basterds) both seem like they are having a lot of fun with their roles here, which is precisely what they should be doing in such a silly movie. Their enthusiasm is contagious. Milla Jovovich does not get to do much acting, but seems to have fun being an action figure. Orlando Bloom isn’t really given much of a chance to sell his over-the-top villainy, which is a shame.

Gabriella Wilde as Constance

But the Musketeers themselves? We really never get to know them, and none of them are charismatic in the least; where the villains have a good time hamming it up, the heroes are dour and boring. We get hints at their own back stories, which are problematic. Athos (Matthew MacFayden) was betrayed, once upon a time, by Jovovich’s Milady, and there is an anti-women sentiment running through basically everything he says that is never addressed by the film. Aramis (Luke Evans), meanwhile, is said to be a former priest, who became a Musketeer when he realized that being a man of the cloth and a man of God are not always the same thing. It’s an interesting idea—the only thing even approximating profundity here—but it’s never explored any deeper.

The movie opens with a Mission: Impossible-ish action sequence that is pretty stupid and contrived; by the time we’re seeing sword fights onboard airships, though, it feels like the movie is finally realizing what it needs to be—goofy, silly fun. Too bad that comes in the final few minutes of the movie, after an hour and a half or so of misfires and failed opportunities.

Talk About It

Discussion starters

What do you make of the comment about how being a “man of God” and a “man of the cloth” are not always the same thing? Do you agree or disagree?
Do you think a “good cause” is required to act heroically?
What do you think about the movie’s attitude toward women?

The Family Corner

For parents to consider

The Three Musketeers is rated PG-13 for sequences of action adventure violence; it’s all very stylized and not graphic, but probably too intense for youngsters. More troubling than the violence itself are the numerous casual references to killing and to murder. There are a couple of obscene words here and there, and nearly every female character in the movie is costumed in a way to show lots of cleavage.